Chapter VII: Part I: “these Three Hundred Years” (3)

O thou! to whose creative power
We dedicate the festal hour,
While Grace and Goodness round the altar stand,
Learning’s anointed train, and Beauty’s rose-lipp’d band—
Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown,
Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own.
Deep in the west, as Independence roves,
His banners planting round the land he loves,
Where Nature sleeps in Eden’s infant grace,
In Time’s full hour shall spring a glorious race:
Thy name, thy verse, thy language shall they bear,
And deck for thee the vaulted temple there.
Our Roman-hearted fathers broke
Thy parent empire’s galling yoke,
But thou, harmonious monarch of the mind,
Around their sons a gentler chain shall bind;
Still o’er our land shall Albion’s sceptre wave,
And what her mighty Lion lost, her mightier Swan shall save.

Prize Ode recited at the representation of the
Shakespeare Jubilee, Boston, February 13,
1824.

CHARLES LAMB, 1824

(1775-1834)

In “sad civility” once Garrick sate
To see a play, mangled in form and state;
Plebeian Shakespeare must the words supply,—
The actors all were fools—of Quality.
The scenes—the dresses—were above rebuke;—
Scarce a performer there below a Duke.
He sate, and mused how in his Shakespeare’s mind
The idea of old nobility enshrined
Should thence a grace and a refinement have
Which passed these living Nobles to conceive—
Who with such apish, base gesticulation,
Remnants of starts, and dregs of playhouse passion,
So foul belied their great forefathers’ fashion!
He saw—and true nobility confessed
Less in the high-born blood, than lowly poet’s breast.

“Epilogue to an amateur Performance of Richard II.,”
ll. 10-24. _Works of Charles and Mary Lamb._
Ed. E. V. Lucas, 1903-4. Vol. v. p. 128.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE, 1827

(1795-1855)

Shakespeare “glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.” All Nature ministers to him, as gladly as a mother to her child. Whether he wishes her to tune her myriad-voiced organ to Romeo’s love, or to Miranda’s innocence, or to Perdita’s simplicity, or to Rosalind’s playfulness, or to the sports of the Fairies, or to Timon’s misanthropy, or to Macbeth’s desolating ambition, or to Lear’s heart-broken frenzy—he has only to ask, and she puts on every feeling and every passion with which he desires to invest her.

* * * * *

No poet comes near Shakespeare in the number of bosom lines,—of lines that we may cherish in our bosoms, and that seem almost as if they had grown there,—of lines that, like bosom friends, are ever at hand to comfort, counsel, and gladden us, under all the vicissitudes of life,—of lines that, according to Bacon’s expression, “come home to our business and bosoms,” and open the door for us to look in, and see what is nestling and brooding there.

_Guesses at Truth._ 1827.

JAMES HOGG, 1831

(1770-1835)

“_To the Genius of Shakespeare._”

Spirit all limitless,
Where is thy dwelling-place?
Spirit of him whose high name we revere,
Come on thy seraph wings,
Come from thy wanderings,
And smile on thy votaries, who sigh for thee here!

Come, O thou spark divine,
Rise from thy hallowed shrine;
Here in the windings of Forth thou shalt see
Hearts true to nature’s call
Spirits congenial,
Proud of their country, yet bowing to thee.

Here with rapt heart and tongue,
While our fond minds were young,
Oft thy bold numbers we poured in our mirth;
Now in our hall for aye
This shall be holiday,
Bard of all Nature, to honour thy birth.

Whether thou tremblest o’er
Green grave of Elsinore,
Stayest o’er the hill of Dunsinnan to hover,
Bosworth, or Shrewsbury,
Egypt or Philippi;
Come from thy roamings the universe over.

Whether thou journey’st far
On by the morning star,
Dream’st on the shadowy brows of the moon,
Or linger’st in fairyland,
’Mid lovely elves to stand,
Singing thy carols unearthly and boon;—

Here thou art called upon,
Come thou to Caledon!
Come to the land of the ardent and free!
The land of the love recess,
Mountain and wilderness,
This is the land, thou wild meteor, for thee!

Oh, never since time had birth,
Rose from the pregnant earth
Gems such as late have in Scotia sprung;—
Gems that in future day,
When ages pass away,
Like thee shall be honoured, like thee shall be sung!

Then here, by the sounding sea,
Forest, and greenwood tree,
Here to solicit thee cease shall we never:
Yes, thou effulgence bright,
Here must thy flame relight,
Or vanish from Nature for ever and ever!

_Songs._ By the Ettrick Shepherd. Now first
collected. 1831, p. 304.

CHARLES LAMB, 1833

(1775-1834)

I am jealous of the combination of the sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres) did Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery do me with Shakespeare?—to have Opie’s Shakespeare, Northcote’s Shakespeare, light-headed Fuseli’s Shakespeare, heavy-headed Romney’s Shakespeare, wooden-headed West’s Shakespeare (though he did the best in “Lear”), deaf-headed Reynolds’s Shakespeare, instead of my, and everybody’s Shakespeare. To be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet! To have Imogen’s portrait! To confine the illimitable!

Letter to Samuel Rogers, December 21, 1833.
_Works of Charles and Mary Lamb._ Ed.
E. V. Lucas, 1903-4. Vol. vii.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE, 1833

(1796-1849)

“_To Shakespeare._”

The soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathom’d centre. Like that Ark,
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O’er the drown’d hills, the human family,
And stock reserved of every living kind,
So in the compass of the single mind
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
That make all worlds. Great Poet, ’twas thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be
Whate’er love, hate, ambition, destiny,
Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart,
Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same,
Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.

_Poems._ Sonnet XXVIII. 1833, p. 28.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 1838

(1785-1859)

In the great world of woman, as the interpreter of the shifting phases and the lunar varieties of that mighty changeable planet, that lovely satellite of man, Shakespeare stands not the first only, not the original only, but is yet the sole authentic oracle of truth. Woman, therefore, the beauty of the female mind, _this_ is one great field of his power. The supernatural world, the world of apparitions, _that_ is another.... In all Christendom, who, let us ask, who, who but Shakespeare has found the power for effectually working this mysterious mode of being?

. . . . . . .

A third fund of Shakespeare’s peculiar power lies in his teeming fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments. From his works alone might be gathered a golden bead-roll of thoughts, the deepest, subtilest, most pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally intelligible; the most characteristic, also, and appropriate to the particular person, the situation, and the case, yet, at the same time, applicable to the circumstances of every human being, under all the accidents of life, and all vicissitudes of fortune. But this subject offers so vast a field of observation, it being so eminently the prerogative of Shakespeare to have thought more finely and more extensively than all other poets combined, that we cannot wrong the dignity of such a theme by doing more, in our narrow limits, than simply noticing it as one of the emblazonries upon Shakespeare’s shield.

Fourthly, we shall indicate (and, as in the last case, _barely_ indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to offer any adequate illustrations) one mode of Shakespeare’s dramatic excellence, which hitherto has not attracted any special or separate notice. We allude to the forms of life, and natural human passion, as apparent in the structure of his dialogue. Among the many defects and infirmities of the French and of the Italian drama, indeed, we may say of the Greek, the dialogue proceeds always by independent speeches, replying indeed to each other, but never modified in its several terminal forms immediately preceding. Now, in Shakespeare, who first set an example of that most important innovation, in all his impassioned dialogues, each reply or rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous speech. Every form of natural interruption, breaking through the restraints of ceremony under the impulses of tempestuous passion; every form of hasty interrogative, ardent reiteration when a question has been evaded; every form of scornful repetition of the hostile words; every impatient continuation of the hostile statement; in short, all modes and formulæ by which anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, impatience, or excitement under any movement whatever, can disturb or modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of commencement,—these are as rife in Shakespeare’s dialogue as in life itself; and how much vivacity, how profound a verisimilitude, they add to the scenic effect as an imitation of human passion and real life, we need not say. A volume might be written, illustrating the vast varieties of Shakespeare’s art and power in this one 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. And we may truly say, that were Shakespeare distinguished from them by this single feature of nature and propriety, he would on that account alone have merited a great immortality.

_Encyclopædia Britannica._ 7th edition, 1838.
Article on Shakespeare.

The following fine apostrophe to Shakespeare occurs at the
end of De Quincey’s essay “On the knocking at the gate in
_Macbeth_”:—O, mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other
men, simply and merely great works of art; but are also like
the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars
and the flowers,—like frost and snow, rain and dew, hailstorm
and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of
our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there
can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert,—but
that, the further we press in our discoveries, the more we
shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement
where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident.

JOHN STERLING, 1839

(1806-1844)

“_Shakespeare._”

How little fades from earth when sink to rest
The hours and cares that moved a great man’s breast!
Though nought of all we saw the grave may spare,
His life pervades the world’s impregnate air;
Though Shakespeare’s dust beneath our footsteps lies,
His spirit breathes amid his native skies;
With meaning won from him for ever glows
Each air that England feels, and star it knows;
His whispered words from many a mother’s voice
Can make her sleeping child in dreams rejoice,
And gleams from spheres he first conjoined to earth
Are blent with rays of each new morning’s birth.
Amid the sights and tales of common things,
Leaf, flower, and bird, and wars, and deaths of kings,
Of shore, and sea, and nature’s daily round,
Of life that tills, and tombs that load the ground,
His visions mingle, swell, command, pace by,
And haunt with living presence heart and eye;
And tones from him by other bosoms caught
Awaken flush and stir of mounting thought,
And the long sigh, and deep impassioned thrill,
Rouse custom’s trance, and spur the faltering will.
Above the goodly land more his than ours
He sits supreme enthroned in skyey towers,
And sees the heroic brood of his creation
Teach larger life to his ennobled nation.
O! shaping brain! O! flashing fancy’s hues!
O! boundless heart kept fresh by pity’s dews!
O! wit humane and blythe! O! sense sublime
For each dim oracle of mantled Time!
Transcendent Form of Man! in whom we read
Mankind’s whole tale of impulse, thought, and deed;
Amid the expanse of years beholding thee,
We know how vast our world of life may be;
Wherein, perchance, with aims as pure as thine,
Small tasks and strengths may be no less divine.

_Poems._ 1839, p. 151.

HENRY HALLAM, 1839

(1777-1859)

Of William Shakespeare, whom, through the mouths of those whom he has inspired to body forth the modifications of his immense mind, we seem to know better than any human writer, it may be truly said that we scarcely know anything. We see him, so far as we do see him, not in himself, but in a reflex image from the objectivity in which he was manifested: he is Falstaff, and Mercutio, and Malvolio, and Jaques, and Portia, and Imogen, and Lear, and Othello; but to us he is scarcely a determined person, a substantial reality of past time, the man Shakespeare. The two greatest names in poetry are to us little more than names. If we are not yet come to question his unity, as we do that of “the blind old man of Scios’ rocky isle,” an improvement in critical acuteness doubtless reserved for a distant posterity, we as little feel the power of identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, was afterwards an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired to his native place in middle life, with the author of Macbeth and Lear, as we can give a distinct historic personality to Homer. All that insatiable curiosity and unwearied diligence have hitherto detected about Shakespeare serves rather to disappoint and perplex us than to furnish the slightest illustration of his character.

_Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the
Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth
Centuries._ 1839, ii. 382-3.

—— JOHNSTONE, 1840

Some men can only acquire knowledge by a careful process of painstaking investigation, while the minds of others descend at once, and with a swoop, as it were, upon the truth of which they are in search. Others, again, can not only do this, but having grasped the truth, they soar upward with it to the highest pinnacles of imaginative loftiness, or beyond these even, to the empyrean of thought, where the minds of ordinarily gifted men may not follow them. Of this last class was Shakespeare, the most wonderful of mere men that we know to have ever lived.

_The Table Talker, or Brief Essays on Society and
Literature._ 1840, vol. i. p. 183.

THOMAS CARLYLE, 1840

(1795-1881)

“_The Hero as Poet._”

It is in what I called Portrait-painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakespeare is great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakespeare. The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost heart and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said; poetic creation, what is this too but _seeing_ the thing sufficiently? The _word_ that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shakespeare’s _morality_, his valour, candour, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there too? Great as the world! No _twisted_, poor convex-concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities; a perfectly _level_ mirror;—that is to say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. _Novum Organum_, and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthly, material, poor in comparison with this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakespeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he _saw_ the object; you may say what he himself says of Shakespeare: “His characters are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.”

_On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History._
Ed. H. D. Traill. 1898, pp. 104-5.

In Carlyle’s essay on “Corn Law Rhymes” (_Edinburgh Review_,
July, 1832, p. 342) occurs the following:—Foolish Pedant,
that sittest there compassionately descanting on the Learning
of Shakespeare! Shakespeare had penetrated into innumerable
things; far into Nature with her divine Splendours and infernal
Terrors, her Ariel Melodies, and mystic mandragora Moans; far
into man’s workings with Nature, into man’s Art and Artifice;
Shakespeare knew (_Kenned_, which in those days still partially
meant _Can-ned_) innumerable things; what men are, and what
the world is, and how and what men aim at there, from the Dame
Quickly of modern Eastcheap to the Cæsar of ancient Rome, over
many countries, over many centuries: of all this he had the
clearest understanding and constructive comprehension; all this
was his Learning and Insight.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1841

(1770-1850)

“_Shakespeare and Goethe._”

He (Goethe) does not seem to me to be a great poet in either of the classes of poets. At the head of the first class I would place Homer and Shakespeare, whose universal minds are able to reach every variety of thought and feeling without bringing their own individuality before the reader. They infuse, they breathe life into every object they approach, but you never find _themselves_. At the head of the second class, those whom you can trace individually in all they write, I would place Spenser and Milton. In all that Spenser writes you can trace the gentle affectionate spirit of the man; in all that Milton writes you find the exalted sustained being that he was. Now, in what Goethe writes, who aims to be of the first class, the _universal_, you find the man himself, the artificial man where he should not be found; so that I consider him a very artificial writer, aiming to be universal, and yet constantly exposing his individuality, which his character was not of a kind to dignify. He had not sufficiently clear moral perceptions to make him anything but an artificial writer.

_Memoirs of William Wordsworth_, by Christopher
Wordsworth. 1851, vol. ii. pp. 437-8.

The value of this estimate of Goethe is somewhat discounted
by a remark made at another time by Wordsworth: “I have tried
to read Goethe. I never could succeed.... I am not intimately
acquainted with them [his poems] generally.” _Memoirs_, ii. p.
478.

THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY, 1843

(1800-1859)

Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity. The characters of which he has given us an impression, as vivid as that which we receive from the characters of our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores. Yet in all these scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates widely from the common standard, and which we should call very eccentric if we met it in real life. The silly notion that every man has one ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakespeare. There man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn. What is Hamlet’s ruling passion? Or Othello’s? Or Harry the Fifth’s? Or Wolsey’s? Or Lear’s? Or Shylock’s? Or Benedick’s? Or Macbeth’s? Or that of Cassius? Or that of Falconbridge? But we might go on for ever. Take a single example, Shylock. Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent to revenge? Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money? Or so bent on both together as to be indifferent to the honour of his nation and the law of Moses? All his propensities are mingled with each other, so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper part, we find the same difficulty which constantly meets us in real life. A superficial critic may say, that hatred is Shylock’s ruling passion. But how many passions have amalgamated to form that hatred? It is partly the result of wounded pride: Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result of covetousness: Antonio has hindered him of half a million; and, when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to the gains of usury. It is partly the result of national and religious feeling: Antonio has spit on the Jewish gabardine; and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish Sabbath. We might go through all the characters which we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way; for it is the constant manner of Shakespeare to represent the human mind as lying, not under the absolute dominion of one despotic propensity, but under a mixed government, in which a hundred powers balance each other. Admirable as he is in all parts of his art, we most admire him for this, that while he has left us a greater number of striking portraits than all other dramatists put together, he has scarcely left us a single caricature.

Essay on “Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay,”
_Edinburgh Review_, Jan. 1843. Art. IX. vol.
lxxvi. pp. 560-1.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1844

(1803-1882)

Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare; and even he can tell nothing except to the Shakespeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He cannot step from off his tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the antique documents extricated, analysed, and compared, by the assiduous Dyce and Collier; and now read one of those skiey sentences—aerolites,—which seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which, not your experience, but the man within the breast, has accepted as words of fate; and tell me if they match, if the former account in any manner for the latter: or, which gives the most historical insight into the man.

Hence, though our external history is so meagre, yet, with Shakespeare for biographer, instead of Aubrey and Rowe, we have really the information which is material, that which describes character and fortune, that which, if we were about to meet the man and deal with him, would most import us to know. We have his recorded convictions on those questions which knock for answer at every heart,—on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life, and the ways whereby we come at them; on the characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science, and which yet interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours. Whoever read the volume of the Sonnets, without finding that the poet had there revealed, under masks that are no masks to the intelligent, the lore of friendship and of love; the confusion of sentiments in the most susceptible, and, at the same time, the most intellectual of men? What trait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas? One can discern, in his ample pictures of the gentleman and the king, that forms and humanities pleased him; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful giving. Let Timon, let Warwick, let Antonio the merchant, answer for his great heart. So far from Shakespeare’s being the least known, he is the one person, in all modern history, known to us. What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of man’s work, has he not remembered? What king has he not taught State, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behaviour?

“Shakespeare; or, the Poet.” _Representative
Men._ 1844, p. 154.

FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON, 1850

(1816-1853)

What I admire in Shakspeare, however, is that his loves are all human—no earthliness hiding itself from itself in sentimental transcendentalism—no loves of the angels, which are the least angelic things, I believe, that float in the clouds, though they do look down upon mortal feelings with contempt, just as the dark volumes of smoke which issue from the long chimney of a manufactory might brood very sublimely over the town which they blacken, and fancy themselves far more ethereal than those vapours which steam up from the earth by day and night. Yet these are pure water, and those are destined to condense in black soot. So are the transcendentalisms of affection. Shakspeare is healthy, true to Humanity in this: and for that reason I pardon him even his earthly coarseness. You always know that you are on an earth which has to be refined, instead of floating in the empyrean with wings of wax. Therein he is immeasurably greater than Shelley. Shelleyism is very sublime, sublimer a good deal than God, for God’s world is all wrong and Shelley is all right—much purer than Christ, for Shelley can criticise Christ’s heart and life—nevertheless, Shelleyism is only atmospheric profligacy, to coin a Montgomeryism. I believe this to be one of Shakespeare’s most wondrous qualities—the humanity of his nature and heart. There is a spirit of sunny endeavour about him, and an acquiescence in things as they are—not incompatible with a cheerful resolve to make them better.

_Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson, M.A._
Edited by Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. 1886,
vol. i. p. 289, Letter LX.

LEIGH HUNT, 1851

(1784-1859)

“_Associations with Shakespeare._”

How naturally the idea of Shakespeare can be made to associate itself with anything which is worth mention! Take Christmas for instance: “Shakespeare and Christmas”; the two ideas fall as happily together as “wine and walnuts,” or heart and soul. So you may put together “Shakespeare and May,” or “Shakespeare and June,” and twenty passages start into your memory about spring and violets. Or you may say “Shakespeare and Love,” and you are in the midst of a bevy of bright damsels, as sweet as rosebuds; or “Shakespeare and Death,” and all graves, and thoughts of graves, are before you; or “Shakespeare and Life,” and you have the whole world of youth, and spirit, and Hotspur, and life itself; or you may say even, “Shakespeare and Hate,” and he will say all that can be said for hate, as well as against it, till you shall take Shylock himself into your Christian arms, and tears shall make you of one faith.

_Table Talk._ 1851, p. 154.

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, 1852

(1818-1894)

We wonder at the grandeur, the moral majesty of some of Shakespeare’s characters, so far beyond what the noblest among ourselves can imitate, and at first thought we attribute it to the genius of the poet, who has outstripped nature in his creations. But we are misunderstanding the power and the meaning of poetry in attributing creativeness to it in any such sense. Shakespeare created, but only as the spirit of nature created around him, working in him as it worked abroad in those among whom he lived. The men whom he draws were such men as he saw and knew; the words they utter were such as he heard in the ordinary conversations in which he joined. At the Mermaid with Raleigh and with Sidney, and at a thousand unnamed English firesides, he found the living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlandos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closer personal acquaintance which we can form with the English of the age of Elizabeth, the more we are satisfied that Shakespeare’s great poetry is no more than the rhythmic echo of the life which it depicts.

_Short Studies on Great Subjects._ First Series.
“England’s Forgotten Worthies.” 1878, i.
445-6, reprinted from _Westminster Review_.
1852.

DAVID MASSON, 1853

(_b._ 1822)

Shakespeare is as astonishing for the exuberance of his genius in abstract notions, and for the depth of his analytic and philosophic insight, as for the scope and minuteness of his poetic imagination. It is as if into a mind poetical in _form_ there had been poured all the _matter_ that existed in the mind of his contemporary Bacon. In Shakespeare’s plays we have thought, history, exposition, philosophy, all within the round of the poet. The only difference between him and Bacon sometimes is that Bacon writes an essay and calls it his own, while Shakespeare writes a similar essay and puts it into the mouth of a Ulysses or a Polonius.

_Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other Essays._ 1874.
Essay V. p. 242, reprinted from _North British
Review_. 1853.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1853

(1822-1888)

“_Shakespeare._”

Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil’d searching of mortality;

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguessed at.—Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

_Poems._ 1853.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, 1853

(1775-1864)

“_Shakespeare and Milton._”

The tongue of England, that which myriads
Have spoken and will speak, were paralysed
Hereafter, but two mighty men stand forth
Above the flight of ages, two alone;
One crying out,
_All nations spoke thro’ me_.

The other:
True; and thro’ this trumpet burst
God’s word; the fall of Angels, and the doom
First of immortal, then of mortal, Man,
Glory! be glory! not to me, to God.

_The Lost Fruit off an old Tree._ No. LVII.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, 1858

(1801-1890)

A great author, gentlemen, is not one who merely has a _copia verborum_, whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid phrases and swelling sentences; but he is one who has something to say and knows how to say it. I do not claim for him, as such, any great depth of thought, or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human nature, or experience of human life, though these additional gifts he may have, and the more he has of them the greater he is; but I ascribe to him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense the faculty of Expression. He is master of the twofold Logos, the thought and the word, distinct, but inseparable from each other. He may, if so be, elaborate his compositions, or he may pour out his improvisations, but in either case he has but one aim, which he keeps steadily before him, and is conscientious and single-minded in fulfilling. That aim is to give forth what he has within him; and from his very earnestness it comes to pass that, whatever be the splendour of his diction or the harmony of his periods, he has with him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. Whatever be his subject, high or low, he treats it suitably and for its own sake. If he is a poet, “nil molitur _inepte_.” If he is an orator, then too he speaks, not only “distincte” and “splendide,” but also “apte.” His page is the lucid mirror of his mind and life:

“Quo fit, ut omnis
Votivâ pateat veluti descripta labellâ
Vita senis.”

He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyse his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous; when his imagination wells up, it overflows its ornament; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is because few words suffice; when he is lavish of them, still each word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march of his elocution. He expresses what all feel, but all cannot say; and his sayings pass into proverbs among his people, and his phrases become household words and idioms of their daily speech, which is tessellated with the rich fragments of his language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of modern palaces.

Such pre-eminently is Shakespeare among ourselves; such pre-eminently is Virgil among the Latins; such in their degree are all those writers who in every nation go by the name of Classics.

“The Idea of a University defined and illustrated.”
_Literature_, ix. 1873, pp. 291-3.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, _c._ 1858

(1819-1891)

Only Shakespeare was endowed with that healthy equilibrium of nature whose point of rest was midway between the imagination and the understanding,—that perfectly unruffled brain which reflected all objects with almost inhuman impartiality,—that outlook whose range was ecliptical, dominating all zones of human thought and action,—that power of verisimilar conception which could take away Richard III. from History, and Ulysses from Homer,—and that creative faculty whose equal touch is alike vivifying in Shallow and in Lear. He alone never seeks in abnormal and monstrous characters to evade the risks and responsibilities of absolute truthfulness, nor to stimulate a jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot. He is never, like many of his fellow-dramatists, confronted with unnatural Frankensteins of his own making, whom he must get off his hands as best he may. Given a human foible, he can incarnate it in the nothingness of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic twilight of Hamlet. We are tired of the vagueness which classes all the Elizabethan playwrights together as “great dramatists,”—as if Shakespeare did not differ from them in kind as well as in degree. Fine poets some of them were; but though imagination and the power of poetic expression are, singly, not uncommon gifts, and even in combination not without secular examples, yet it is the rarest of earthly phenomena to find them joined with those faculties of perception, arrangement, and plastic instinct in the loving union which alone makes a great dramatic poet possible. We suspect that Shakespeare will long continue the only specimen of the genus. His contemporaries, in their comedies, either force what they call “a humour” till it becomes fantastical, or hunt for jokes, like rat-catchers, in the sewers of human nature and of language. In their tragedies they become heavy without grandeur, like Jonson, or mistake the stilts for the cothurnus, as Chapman and Webster too often do. Every new edition of an Elizabethan dramatist is but the putting of another witness into the box to prove the inaccessibility of Shakespeare’s standpoint as poet and artist.

_Library of Old Authors._ 1858-64.

For an interesting note on Shakespeare’s “artistic discretion”
and the “impersonality” of his writings, see “Shakespeare once
more” (_Among My Books._ 1870, pp. 226-7).

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 1863

(1804-1864)

Shakespeare has surface beneath surface, to an immeasurable depth, adapted to the plummet-line of every reader; his works present many phases of truth, each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely discover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting the various interpretation of his symbols; and a thousand years hence, a world of new readers will possess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these volumes old already.

_Our Old Home._ 1863, i. 171.

In _Our Old Home_ (i. 158-60) Hawthorne records his impressions
on visiting Shakespeare’s house.

BISHOP CHARLES WORDSWORTH, 1864

(1806-1892)

Take the entire range of English literature; put together our best authors, who have written upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, and we shall not find, I believe, in them _all united_, so much evidence of the Bible having been read and used, as we have found in Shakespeare _alone_. This is a phenomenon which admits of being looked at from several points of view; but I shall be content to regard it solely in connection with the undoubted fact, that of all our authors, Shakespeare is also, by general confession, the greatest and the best. According to the testimony of Charles Lamb, a most competent judge in regard to all the literary elements of the question, our poet, “in his divine mind and manners, surpassed not only the great men his contemporaries, but all mankind.” And, looking at this superiority from my own point of view, I cannot but remark that, while most of the great laymen of that great Elizabethan age—Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, the poet Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Burleigh, Ben Jonson—have paid homage to Christianity, if not always in their practice, yet in the conviction of their understanding, none of them has done this so fully or so effectively as Shakespeare.

“_On Shakespeare’s Knowledge and Use of the
Bible._” 1864, pp. 291-2.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1864

(1809-1894)

O land of Shakespeare! ours with all thy past,
Till these last years that make the sea so wide,
Think not the jar of battle’s trumpet-blast
Has dulled our aching sense to joyous pride
In every noble word thy sons bequeathed
The air our fathers breathed!

War-wasted, haggard, panting from the strife,
We turn to other days and far-off lands,
Live o’er in dreams the Poet’s faded life,
Come with fresh lilies in our fevered hands
To wreathe his bust, and scatter purple flowers,—
Not his the need, but ours!

We call those poets who are first to mark
Through earth’s dull mist the coming of the dawn,—
Who see in twilight’s gloom the first pale spark,
While others only note that day is gone;
For him the Lord of light the curtain rent
That veils the firmament . . .

With no vain praise we mock the stone-carved name
Stamped once on dust that moved with pulsed breath,
As thinking to enlarge that amplest fame
Whose undimmed glories gild the night of death:
We praise not star or sun; in these we see
Thee, Father, only Thee!

Thy gifts are beauty, wisdom, power, and love:
We read, we reverence on this human soul,—
Earth’s clearest mirror of the light above,—
Plain as the record on Thy prophet’s scroll,
When o’er his page the effluent splendours poured,
Thine own, “Thus saith the Lord!”

This player was a prophet from on high,
Thine own elected. Statesman, poet, sage,
For him Thy sovereign pleasure passed them by;
Sidney’s fair youth, and Raleigh’s ripened age,
Spenser’s chaste soul, and his imperial mind
Who taught and shamed mankind.

“Shakespeare Tercentennial Celebration, 23 April
1864.” _Songs of Many Seasons._ 1875.

CARDINAL WISEMAN, 1865

(1802-1865)

We may compare the mind of Shakespeare to a diamond, pellucid, bright, and untinted, cut into countless polished facets, which, in constant movement, at every smallest change of direction or of angle, caught a new reflection, so that not one of its brilliant mirrors could be for a moment idle, but by a power beyond its control was ever busy with the reflection of innumerable images, either distinct or running into one another, or repeated each so clearly as to allow him, when he chose, to fix it in his memory.

_William Shakespeare._ 1865, p. 50.

ARCHBISHOP RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, 1865

(1807-1886)

A counsellor well fitted to advise
In daily life, and at whose lips no less
Men may inquire or nations, when distress
Of sudden doubtful danger may arise,
Who, though his head be hidden in the skies,
Plants his firm foot upon our common earth,
Dealing with thoughts which everywhere have birth,—
This is the poet, true of heart and wise:
No dweller in a baseless world of dream,
Which is not earth nor heaven: his words have passed
Into man’s common thought and week-day phrase;
This is the poet and his verse will last.
Such was our Shakespeare once, and such doth seem
One who redeems our later gloomier days.

_Poems collected and arranged anew._ 1865, p. 83.

FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE, 1865

(1824-1897)

Only three or four generations of fairly long-lived men lie between us and Shakespeare; literature in his own time had reached a high development; his grandeur and sweetness were freely recognised; within seventy years of his death his biography was attempted; yet we know little more of Shakespeare himself than we do of Homer. Like several of the greatest men,—Lucretius, Virgil, Tacitus, Dante,—a mystery never to be dispelled hangs over his life. He has entered into the cloud. With a natural and an honourable diligence, other men have given their lives to the investigation of his, and many external circumstances, mostly of a minor order, have been thus collected: yet of “the man Shakespeare,” in Mr. Hallam’s words, we know nothing. Something which seems more than human in immensity of range and calmness of insight moves before us in the Plays; but, from the nature of dramatic writing, the author’s personality is inevitably veiled; no letter, no saying of his, or description by an intimate friend, has been preserved: and even when we turn to the _Sonnets_, though each is an autobiographical confession, we find ourselves equally foiled. These revelations of the poet’s innermost nature appear to teach us less of the man than the tone of mind which we trace, or seem to trace, in _Measure for Measure_, _Hamlet_, and the _Tempest_: the strange imagery of passion which passes over the magic mirror has no tangible existence before or behind it:—the great artist, like Nature herself, is still latent in his works; diffused through his own creation.

. . . . . .

Yet there is, after all, nothing more remarkable or fascinating in English poetry than these personal revelations of the mind of our greatest poet. We read them again and again, and find each time some new proof of his almost superhuman insight into human nature; of his unrivalled mastery over all the tones of love.

_Songs and Sonnets of William Shakespeare._ Edited
by Francis Turner Palgrave. 1865, pp. 238-9
and 243.

FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE, 1866

(1809-1893)

“_To Shakespeare._”

Shelter and succour such as common men
Afford the weaker partners of their fate,
Have I derived from thee—from thee, most great
And powerful genius! whose sublime control
Still from thy grave governs each human soul,
That reads the wondrous record of thy pen.
From sordid sorrows thou hast set me free,
And turned from want’s grim ways my tottering feet,
And to sad empty hours, given royally,
A labour, than all leisure far more sweet.
The daily bread, for which we humbly pray,
Thou gavest me as if I were a child,
And still with converse noble, wise, and mild,
Charmed with despair my sinking soul away;
Shall I not bless the need, to which was given
Of all the angels in the host of heaven,
Thee, for my guardian, spirit strong and bland!
Lord of the speech of my dear native land!

_Poems._ 1866, p. 61.

JOHN RUSKIN, 1868

(1819-1900)

It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us have read, either of Homer, or Shakespeare: everything round us, in substance, or in thought, has been moulded by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under Homer. All Roman gentlemen by Greek literature. All Italian, and French, and English gentlemen, by Roman literature, and by its principles. Of the scope of Shakespeare, I will say only, that the intellectual measure of every man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned to him, according to the degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare.

_The Mystery of Life and its Arts._ Afternoon
Lectures on Literature and Art, delivered
at Royal College of Science, St.
Stephen’s Green, Dublin, 1867 and 1868.
1869, p. 109.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, 1871

(1828-1882)

“_On the Site of a Mulberry-Tree._”

_Planted by William Shakespeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell._

This tree, here fall’n, no common birth or death
Shared with its kind. The world’s enfranchised son,
Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,
Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.
Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath
Rank also singly—the supreme unhung?
Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue,
This viler thief’s unsuffocated breath!

We’ll search thy glossary, Shakespeare! whence almost,
And whence alone, some name shall be reveal’d
For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of years
Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres;
Whose soul is carrion now,—too mean to yield
Some Starveling’s ninth allotment of a ghost.

_Academy_, 15 Feb. 1871.[185:1] _Collected Works._ Ed.
W. M. Rossetti. 1886, vol. i. p. 285.

FOOTNOTES:

[185:1] The last line in the earlier version—that printed in the _Academy_—has “tailor’s” for “Starveling’s.” Rossetti made the alteration from fear of offending sensitive members of the tailoring profession.

BAYARD TAYLOR, 1872

(1825-1878)

“_Shakespeare’s Statue, Central Park, New York, 23 May 1872._”

Here, in his right, he stands!
No breadth of earth-dividing seas can bar
The breeze of morning, or the morning star,
From visiting our lands:
His wit the breeze, his wisdom as the star,
Shone where our earliest life was set, and blew
To freshen hope and plan
In brains American,—
To urge, resist, encourage, and subdue!
He came, a household ghost we could not ban:
He sat, on winter nights, by cabin fires;
His summer fairies linked their hands
Along our yellow sands;
He preached within the shadow of our spires;
And when the certain Fate drew nigh, to cleave
The birth-cord, and a separate being leave,
He, in our ranks of patient-hearted men,
Wrought with the boundless forces of his fame,
Victorious, and became
The Master of our thought, the land’s first Citizen!
If, here, his image seem
Of softer scenes and grayer skies to dream,
Thatched cot and rustic tavern, ivied hall,
The cuckoo’s April call
And cowslip-meads beside the Avon stream,
He shall not fail that other home to find
We could not leave behind!
The forms of Passion, which his fancy drew,
In us their ancient likenesses beget:
So, from our lives for ever born anew,
He stands amid his own creations yet!
Here comes lean Cassius, of conventions tired;
Here, in his coach, luxurious Antony
Beside his Egypt, still of men admired;
And Brutus plans some purer liberty!
A thousand Shylocks, Jew and Christian, pass;
A hundred Hamlets, by their times betrayed;
And sweet Anne Page comes tripping o’er the grass,
And awkward Falstaff pants beneath the shade.
Here toss upon the wanton summer wind
The locks of Rosalind;
Here some gay glove the damned spot conceals
Which Lady Macbeth feels:
His ease here smiling smooth Iago takes,
And outcast Lear gives passage to his woe,
And here some foiled Reformer sadly breaks
His wand of Prospero!
In liveried splendour, side by side,
Nick Bottom and Titania ride,
And Portia, flushed with cheers of men,
Disdains dear faithful Imogen;
And Puck beside the form of Morse,
Stops on his forty-minute course;
And Ariel from his swinging bough
A blossom casts on Bryant’s brow,
Until, as summoned from his brooding brain,
He sees his children all again,
In us, as on our lips, each fresh, immortal strain!

_Poetical Works._ Stanzas II.-III. 1880, p. 224.

WILLIAM MINTO, 1874

(1845-1893)

It is a favourite way with some eulogists of Shakespeare to deny him all individuality whatsoever. He was not one man, they say, but an epitome of all men. His mind, says Hazlitt, “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 was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were or that they could become.” Against such a degradation of Shakespeare’s character, or of any man’s character, it is our duty to protest. On trying to make Shakespeare more than human, the reckless panegyrist makes him considerably less than human: instead of the man whose prudence made him rich, whose affectionate nature made him loved almost to idolatry, and whose genius has been the wonder of the world, we are presented with plasticity in the abstract, an object not more interesting than a quarry of potter’s clay.

“William Shakespeare, his Life and Character.”
_Characteristics of English Poets._ 1874,
p. 350.

See the passage from Hazlitt’s _Lectures on the English Poets_,
p. 135.

EDWARD DOWDEN, 1875

(_b._ 1843)

There are certain problems which Shakespeare at once pronounces insoluble. He does not, like Milton, propose to give any account of the origin of evil. He does not, like Dante, pursue the soul of man through circles of unending torture, or spheres made radiant by the eternal presence of God. Satan, in Shakespeare’s poems, does not come voyaging on gigantic vans across Chaos to find the earth. No great deliverer of mankind descends from the heavens. Here, upon the earth, evil _is_—such was Shakespeare’s declaration in the most emphatic accent. Iago actually exists. There is also in the earth a sacred passion of deliverance, a pure redeeming ardour. Cordelia exists. This Shakespeare can tell for certain. But how Iago can be, and why Cordelia lies strangled across the breast of Lear—are these questions which you go on to ask? Something has been already said of the severity of Shakespeare. It is a portion of his severity to decline all answers to such questions as these. Is ignorance painful? Well, then, it is painful. Little solutions of your large difficulties can readily be obtained from priest or _philosopher_. Shakespeare prefers to let you remain in the solemn presence of a mystery. He does not invite you into his little church or his little library brilliantly illuminated by philosophical or theological rushlights. You remain in the darkness. But you remain in the vital air. And the great night is overhead.

_Shakspere: A Critical Study of his Mind and Art._
1875, p. 226.

GEORGE MEREDITH, 1877

(_b._ 1828)

Shakespeare is a well-spring of characters which are saturated with the comic spirit; with more of what we will call blood-life than is to be found anywhere out of Shakespeare; and they are of this world, but they are of the world enlarged to our embrace by imagination, and by great poetic imagination. They are, as it were—I put it to suit my present comparison—creatures of the woods and wilds, not in walled towns, not grouped and toned to pursue a comic exhibition of the narrower world of society. Jaques, Falstaff and his regiment, the varied troop of clowns, Malvolio, Sir Hugh Evans and Fluellen—marvellous Welshmen!—Benedict [_sic_] and Beatrice, Dogberry, and the rest, are subjects of a special study in the poetically comic.

_On the Idea of Comedy and of the Uses of the Comic
Spirit._ A lecture delivered at the London
Institution, 1 Feb. 1877. Published 1897.

FREDERICK JAMES FURNIVALL, 1877

(_b._ 1825)

Altogether “a manly man” (as Chaucer says) this Shakespeare, strong, tender, humourful, sensitive, impressionable, the truest friend, the foe of none but narrow minds and base. And as we track his work from the lightness and fun of its rise, through the fairy fancy, the youthful passion, the rich imaginings, the ardent patriotism, the brilliant sunshine, of his first and second times, through the tender affection of his Sonnets, the whirlwind of passions in his Tragedies, and then to the lovely sunset of his latest plays, what can we do but bless his name, and be thankful that he came to be a delight, a lift and strength, to us and our children’s children to all time—a bond that shall last for ever between all English-speaking, English-reading men, the members of that great Teutonic brotherhood which shall yet long lead the world in the fight for freedom and for truth!

Introduction to _The Leopold Shakspere_.
1877, p. cxvi.

WALTER HORATIO PATER, 1878

(1839-1894)

As happens with every true dramatist, Shakespeare is for the most part hidden behind the persons of his creation. Yet there are certain of his characters in which we feel that there is something of self-portraiture. And it is not so much in his grander, more subtle and ingenious creations that we feel this—in “Hamlet” and “King Lear”—as in those slighter and more spontaneously developed figures, who, while far from playing principal parts, are yet distinguished by a peculiar happiness and delicate ease in the drawing of them; figures which possess, above all, that winning attractiveness which there is no man but would willingly exercise, and which resemble those works of art which, though not meant to be very great or imposing, are yet wrought of the choicest material. Mercutio, in “Romeo and Juliet,” belongs to this group of Shakespeare’s characters—versatile, mercurial people, such as make good actors, and in whom the

“Nimble spirits of the arteries,”

the finer but still merely animal elements of great wit, predominate. A careful delineation of minor yet expressive traits seems to mark them out as the characters of his predilection; and it is hard not to identify him with these more than with others. Biron, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” is perhaps the most striking member of this group. In this character, which is never quite in touch, never quite on a perfect level of understanding, with the other persons of the play, we see, perhaps, a reflex of Shakespeare himself, when he has just become able to stand aside from and estimate the first period of his poetry.

“Love’s Labour’s Lost.” _Appreciations with an
Essay on Style._ 1889, pp. 174-5.