Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/197

Rh imagine mass without cohesion; a creative genius, consequently, a man of imagination all compact, does not necessarily start from ethics in moulding his works, but it is more likely that the moral principle which his works must contain as a part of their reality will be secondary and derivative. Shakespeare is ethical because he imagined life truly; he did not imagine life truly because he had thought out, in Lord Bacon's manner, the general principles of morals.