THE MIND OF SHAKESPERE
and reading, which was considerable, supplied him with the draperies of his figures." And again, "He was not only a great poet, but a great philosopher."
No more significant but probably better known is that passage in which Hazlitt subtilizes about the mind of Shakspere, saying nothing new, perhaps, but setting an example in his phrase for the manner of question we noticed in the student's guide-book. "The striking peculiarity of Shakspere's mind," he says, "was its generic quality, its power of communication with all other minds, so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias or exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, in-
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