to his:—
White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine,
Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves—
or his:—
. . . magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn—
in which the very same note is struck as in those extracts which I quoted
from Celtic romance, and struck with authentic and unmistakeable power.
Shakspeare, in handling nature, touches this Celtic note so exquisitely,
that perhaps one is inclined to be always looking for the Celtic note in
him, and not to recognise his Greek note when it comes. But if one
attends well to the difference between the two notes, and bears in mind,
to guide one, such things as Virgil’s ‘moss-grown springs and grass
softer than sleep:’—