Note 5 — CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW (continued 4)
Reading edition
The universality of Shakespear’s genius has, perhaps, been a disadvantage to his single works: the variety of his resources has prevented him from giving that intense concentration of interest to some of them which they might have had. He is in earnest only in Lear and Timon. He combined the powers of Æschylus and Aristophanes, of Dante and Rabelais, in his own mind. If he had been only half what he was, he might have seemed greater.