In this casualty--for
no good thing can reasonably be ascribed to design on the part of the
first editors--there would seem to be something more than usual of what
we may call, if it so please us, a happy providence. It is certain that
no studious arrangement could possibly have brought the book to a happier
end. Here is depth enough with height enough of tragic beauty and
passion, terror and love and pity, to approve the presence of the most
tragic Master's hand; subtlety enough of sweet and bitter truth to attest
the passage of the mightiest and wisest scholar or teacher in the school
of the human spirit; beauty with delight enough and glory of life and
grace of nature to proclaim the advent of the one omnipotent Maker among
all who bear that name. Here above all is the most heavenly triad of
human figures that ever even Shakespeare brought together; a diviner
three, as it were a living god-garland of the noblest earth-born brothers
and loveworthiest heaven-born sister, than the very givers of all grace
and happiness to their Grecian worshippers of old time over long before.
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