I have been accused by some who have taken the trouble of reading these papers, that I am fond of paradoxes, and write not to comment upon Shakspeare, but to display logical dexterity in maintaining the untenable side of every question. To maintain that Falstaff was in heart melancholy and Jaques gay, to contrast the fortunes of Romeo and Bottom, or to plead the cause of Lady Macbeth, is certainly not in accordance with the ordinary course of criticism; but I have given my reasons, sound or unsound as they may be, for my opinions, which I have said with old Montaigne, I do not pretend to be good, but to be mine. What appears to me to be the distinguishing feature of Shakspeare is, that his characters are real men and women, not mere abstractions. In the best of us all there are many blots, in the worst there are many traces of goodness. There is no such thing as angels or devils in the world. We have passions and feelings, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, pretty equally distributed among us; and that which actuates the highest and the lowest, the most virtuous and the most profligate, the bravest and meanest, must, in its original elements, be the same. People do not commit wicked actions from the mere love of wickedness; there must always be an incentive of precisely the same kind as that which stimulates to the noblest actions—ambition, love of adventure, passion, necessity.