My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes;[B]
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
From the Painting known as the Chandos Portrait, attributed to Richard Burbage, in the National Portrait Gallery.
We shall have occasion to show that Shakespeare had much to do in shaping and raising the drama out of that chaotic state in which he found it, and the wonder has always been that, with his apparently imperfect education, he could accomplish so much. But there is no education like self-education; this was William Shakespeare's, and his genius was of that brilliant and healthy kind that gave him all the advantages of such a tuition. In history and in society he found the materials of the drama, but the wealth and power of the poet he found in the great school of Nature.