II.
It would be superfluous for a lecturer on Shakespeare to put to himself the question, What place do you intend to give to the subject of your discourse in the literature of England or of Europe? Whatever difference of opinion may exist elsewhere, I believe that in this country only one answer will be given. Among our native writers no one questions that Shakespeare is supremely pre-eminent, and most of us will probably assign him as lofty a position in the whole range of modern European literature. Perhaps no other nation possesses among its writers any one name to which there is no rival claim, nor even an approximation of equality, to make a balance against it. Were we to imagine in England a Walhalla erected to contain the effigies of great men, and were one especial hall to contain those of our most eminent dramatists, it must needs be so constructed as to have one central niche. Were a similar structure prepared in France, it would be natural to place in equal prominence at least two figures, or, in classical language, two different muses of Tragedy and of Comedy would have to be separately represented. But in England, assign what place we may to those who have excelled in either branch in mimic art, [{554}] the highest excellence in both would be found centered in one man; and from him on either side would have to range the successful cultivators of the drama.
But this claim to so undisputed an elevation does not rest upon his merits only in this field of our literature. Shakespeare has established his claim to the noblest position in English literature on a wider and more solid basis than the mere composition of skilful plays could deserve. As the great master of our language, as almost its regenerator, quite its refiner—as the author whose use of a word stamps it with the mark of purest English coinage—whose employment of a phrase makes it household and proverbial—whose sententious sayings, flowing without effort from his mind, seem almost sacred, and are quoted as axioms or maxims indisputable—as the orator whose speeches, not only apt, but natural to the lips from which they issue, are more eloquent than the discourses of senators or finished public speakers—as the poet whose notes are richer, more wondrously varied than those of the greatest professed bards—as the writer who has run through the most varied ways and to the greatest extent through every department of literature and learning, through the history of many nations, their domestic manners, their characteristics, and even their personal distinctives, and who seems to have visited every part of nature, to have intuitively studied the heavens and the earth—as the man, in fine, who has shown himself supreme in so many things, superiority in any one of which gains reputation in life and glory after death, he is preeminent above all, and beyond the reach of envy or jealousy.
And if no other nation can show us another man whose head rises above all their other men of letters, as Shakespeare does over ours, they cannot pretend, by the accumulation of separated excellences, to put in competition with him a type rather than a realization of possible worth.
Until, therefore, some other writer can be produced, no matter from what nation, who unites in himself personally these gifts of our bard in an equally sublime degree, his stature overtops them all, wherever born and however celebrated.
The question, however, may be raised, Is he so securely placed upon his pedestal that a rival may not one day thrust him from it?—is he so secure upon his throne that a rebel may not usurp it? To these interrogations I answer unhesitatingly, Yes.
In the first place, there have only been two poets in the world before Shakespeare who have attained the same position with him. Each came at the moment which closed the volume of the period past and opened that of a new epoch. Of what preceded Homer we can know but little; the songs by bards or rhapsodists had, no doubt, preceded him, and prepared the way for the first and greatest epic. This, it is acknowledged, has never been surpassed; it became the standard of language, the steadfast rule of versification, and the model of poetical composition. His supremacy, once attained, was shaken by no competition; it was as well assured after a hundred years as it has been by thousands. Dante again stood between the remnants of the old Roman civilization and the construction of a new and Christian system of arts and letters. He, too, consolidated the floating fragments of an indefinite language, and with them built and thence himself fitted and adorned that stately vessel which bears him through all the regions of life and of death, of glory, of trial, and of perdition.
A word found in Dante is classical to the Italian ear; a form, however strange in grammar, traced to him, is considered justifiable if used by any modern sonneteer. [Footnote 105] He holds the place in his own country which Shakespeare does in ours; not only is his terza rima considered inimitable, [{555}] but the concentration of brilliant imagery in our words, the flashes of his great thoughts and the copious variety of his learning, marvellous in his age, make his volume be to this day the delight of every refined intelligence and every polished mind in Italy.
[Footnote 105: Any one acquainted with Mastrofini's "Dictionary of Italian Verbs" will understand this.]
And he, too, like Homer, notwithstanding the magnificent poets who succeeded him, has never for a moment lost that fascination which he alone exercises over the domain of Italian poetry. He was as much its ruler in his own age as he is in the present.
In like manner, the two centuries and more which have elapsed since Shakespeare's death have as completely confirmed him in his legitimate command as the same period did his two only real predecessors. No one can possibly either be placed in a similar position or come up to his great qualities, except at the expense of the destruction of our present civilization, the annihilation of its past traditions, the resolution of our language into jargon, and its regeneration, by a new birth, into something "more rich and strange" than the powerful idiom which so splendidly combines the Saxon and the Norman elements. Should such a devastation and reconstruction take place, whether they come from New Zealand or from Siberia, then there may spring up the poet of that time and condition who may be the fourth in that great series of unrivalled bards, but will no more interfere with his predecessor's rights than Dante or Shakespeare does with those of Homer.
But further, we may truly say that the legislator of a people can be but one, and, as such, can have no rival beyond his own shores. Solon, Lycurgus, and Numa are the only three men in profane history who have reached the dignity of this singular title. The first seized on the character of the bland and polished Athenians, and framed his code in such harmony with it, that no subsequent laws, even in the periods of most corrupt relaxation, could efface their primitive stamp, cease to make the republic proud of their lawgiver's name.
Lycurgus understood the stern and almost savage hardihood and simplicity of the Spartan disposition, and perpetuated it and regulated it by his harsh and unfeeling system, of which, notwithstanding, the Lacedaemonian was proud. And so Numa Pompilius comprehended the readiness of the infant republic, sprung from so doubtful and discreditable a parentage, to discover a noble descent, and connect its birth and education with gods and heroes; took hold of this weakness for the sanction of his legislation; and feigned his conferences with the nymph Egeria as the sources of his wisdom. No; whatever may become of kings, legislators are never dethroned.
And so is Shakespeare the unquestioned legislator of modern literary art. No one will contend that, without certain detriment, it would be possible for a modern writer, especially of dramatic fiction, to go back beyond him and endeavor to establish a pre-Shakespearian school of English literature, as we have the pre-Raphaelite in art. Struggle and writhe as any genius may—even if endowed with giant strength it—will be but as the battle of the Titans against Jove. Huge rocks will be rolled down upon him, and the lightning from Shakespeare's hand will assuredly tear his laurels, if it do not strike his head. Byron could not appreciate the dramatic genius of Shakespeare; perhaps his sympathies ranged more freely among corsairs and Suliotes than among purer and nobler spirits. Certainly he speaks of him with a superciliousness which betrays his inability fully to comprehend him. [Footnote 106] And yet, would "Manfred" have existed if the romantic drama and the spirit-agency of Shakespeare [{556}] had not given it life and rule? So in other nations. I shall probably quote to you the sentiments of foreign writers of highest eminence concerning Shakespeare, not as authorities, but as illustrations of what I may say.
[Footnote 106: Lord Byron thus writes to Mr. Murray, July 14, 1821: "I trust that Sardanapalus will not be mistaken for a political play . . . . You will find all this very unlike Shakespeare; and so much the better, in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers."—Moore's Life of Lord Byron.]
Singularly enough, the greatest of German modern writers has nowhere recorded a full and deliberate opinion on our poet. But who can doubt that "Götz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand," and even the grand and tender "Faust," and no less Schiller's "Wallenstein," belong to the family of Shakespeare, are remotely offsprings of his genius, and have to be placed as tributary garlands round his pedestal. To imagine Shakespeare even in intention removed from his sovereignty would be a treachery parallel only to that of Lear dethroned by his own daughters.
But still more may we say that, in all such positions as that which we have assigned to Shakespeare, there has always been a culminating point to which succeeds decline—if not downfall. It is so in art. Immediately after the death of Raphael, and the dispersion of his school, art took a downward direction, and has never risen again to the same height. And while he marks the highest elevation ever reached in the arts of Europe, a similar observation will apply to their particular schools. Leonardo and Luini in Lombardy; the Carracci in Bologna; Fra Angelico in Umbria; Garofalo in Ferrara, not only take the place of chiefs in their respective districts, but mark the period from which degeneracy has to date. And so surely is it in our case, whatever may have been the course of literature which led up to Shakespeare, without pronouncing judgment on Spenser, or "rare Ben Jonson," it is certain that after him, although England has possessed great poets, there stands not one forward among them as Shakespeare's competitor. Milton, and Dryden, and Addison, and Rowe have given us specimens of high dramatic writing of no mean quality; others as well, and even these have written much and nobly, in lofty as in familiar verse; yet not one has the public judgment of the nation placed on a level with him. The intermediate space from them to our own times has left only the traces of a weak and enervated school. It would be unbecoming to speak disparagingly of the poets of the present age; but no one, I believe, has ventured to consider them as superior to the noble spirits of our Augustan age. The easy descent from the loftiest eminence is not easily reclimbed.
Surely, then, we may consider Shakespeare, as an ancient mythologist would have done, as "enskied" among "the invulnerable clouds," where no shaft, even of envy, can assail him. From this elevation we may safely predict that he never can be plucked.