ABSTRACT
Judging by external indications, an observer would pronounce that literature was in an advanced stage throughout the United States; that intellectual culture was in full bloom; that Shakspeare was the god of American idolatry. The faculty to which Shakspeare chiefly appeals in all his writings, the imagination, is at the very lowest point of development and cultivation, as is clearly shown in the character of such productions as are really popular among us. A volume might be written illustrating the vast varieties of Shakspeare’s art and power in the field of improvement; another volume might be dedicated to the exposure of the lifeless and unnatural result from the opposite practice in the foreign stages of France and Italy. That were Shakspeare distinguished from them by this single feature of nature and propriety, he would on that account alone have merited a great immortality.
