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436 one need wonder that his youthful and brilliant imagination gladly cradled itself in those materials where, freed from the strong yoke of reason, it could produce every variety of serious or startling effects in defiance of probability. This poet, whose spirit and hand moved with equal restlessness, whose manuscripts had hardly a trace of correction or improvement, must certainly have abandoned himself with special delight to that unbridled and adventuresome play of the imagination in which he could develop without restraint all his varied powers. He could cast with a free hand all things into his comedies, and indeed he did pour in everything except what was utterly intolerable in such a system—that is, that logical connection which subordinates every part of the piece to the main object, and sets forth in every detail the depth, extent, and unity of the work. In the tragedies of Shakespeare we seldom find a conception, a situation, an act of passion, a degree of crime or of virtue, which one cannot also find in one of his comedies; but what there expands itself in the abysmal depth, what manifests itself abundantly in overwhelming results, what weaves itself powerfully into a series of causes and effects, that is here hardly intimated—it is only cast in for an instant, to produce a fleeting effect, to lose itself as quickly in a new combination." In truth the Elephant is in the right : the soul