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262 somewhat broader in his mind than in ours: the stage of his dramas is the whole wide world, and that is his unity of place; eternity is the time in which his pieces played, and that is his unity of time; and in keeping with both is the hero of his dramas, who forms the central point, and represents the unity of interest. And humanity is that hero who ever dies and comes to life again; who ever loves and hates, yet loves the most; who bends like a worm to-day, and soars to-morrow like an eagle to the sun—deserving to-day a cap and bells, to-morrow a laurel wreath, and oftener both together: the great dwarf, the little giant, the homœopathically prepared divinity, in whom that which is divine is indeed terribly diluted, but still there. Ah! let us not speak too much of the heroism of this hero, out of very modesty and shame. The same fidelity and truth which Shakespeare manifests as regards history is found as to Nature. People are wont to say that he held the mirror up to it. The expression is incorrect, for it leads us astray as to the relations of the poet to Nature. In the poetic soul not only Nature is mirrored, but an image of it which, being like the most faithful reflection of a looking-glass, is born in the spirit of the poet; he brings at the game time the world forth unto the world, and if he, awaking from the dreaming age of