[CHAPTER XV.
SHAKESPEARIANA—“TRUTH, LORD.”]
After dinner in the cabin we moved our chairs out under the trees, and The Man said:
“Yes, I know you wish to hear more about Shakespeare, but before I tell you more of his personal history, let us consider two or three facts in reference to him. First, you know he was not technically a scholar. Between him and the great ancient hearts he was to read there intervened no frosty twilight of antiquarian lore. He had not to clip and measure and adjust amid moth-eaten cerements and rusty armor that he might be able to fashion forth the exterior and shell of times long since gone by, but only to cast asunder the gates of the human heart, that those deathless notes might be heard which are the undertone of human emotion in all times.
“Well it was that he who was to give to our tongue that tune which it was never to lose, whose language, exhaustless in range, in delicacy, force and extent, taking every hue of thought or feeling, of good and base alike, as the sky takes shade or shadow, or as the forest takes storm or calm, was to remain forever the emblem of the multitudinous life, as contrasted with that affected gravity and ossified scholasticism which we so often see—was tempted by no familiarity with ancient writing to any formal rotundity or college-professor mannerism of diction. His audience is the world, and the numbers increase as civilization grows—he moves to-day a broader stratum of human sympathy than any other man who ever lived save one—and this could not have been had he passed into that narrow chamber called a school. And yet no four walls of a college could have held him, for he of all men would have been least apt to prefer the poor glitter of learned paint to God’s sunlight of living smiles. When one thinks how much learning has done to veil genius and impede progress, it is impossible to suppress a sense of satisfaction at the thought that the greatest author of all mankind was not learned! His only teacher was nature, his only need was freedom. Who gave him this?—a woman!
“Now do not suppose that I have no sympathy with colleges, for no man knows their worth better than I; but it is better to build for eternity than for a Regents’ examination. Another thing you must remember is that Shakespeare was surrounded by no circle of admirers. Healthy, whole-hearted, it never occurred to him to ask what precise position he might occupy in the world of letters. He did his work for the approbation of one alone, and she being pleased he was content.
“No jealousy, strife or contention, do you see on that smooth brow; no hate or fear of unjust rivalry. He was monarch of one loving, truthful, trusting heart, so what cared he for popular applause? A prophet has said, ‘Oh, thou foul Circean draught of popular applause, thy end is madness and the grave!’ This most subtle and deadly of all poisons was never mingled in the cup of Shakespeare, and never can be in that of anyone if they work only for the applause of honest love, that can dissemble not. To work for popular applause is to court death; to succeed in winning it, is to be carried to the pinnacle of the temple and cast upon the stones beneath.
“If a man toil for the good-will of the multitude, there will come as sure as fate, the time when the egotism of acquirement will render callous day by day all of his finer perceptions, kill his delicate sensibilities, destroy his manhood. No longer will he hold the mirror up to nature; no longer will the ray of light shine through the prism, reflecting the beauty of the rainbow—he is opaque, dead; and the only sound he gives is ego, Ego, EGO.
“Need I give illustrations? Look about you on every hand. Where in all the realm of books is the author free from this taint! But yes, there are some. This century has seen a few, but you can count them on the fingers of one hand. Hero worship is twice cursed. It bewilders the hero into fantastic error and extravagance, and the fools who worship accept for a time anything the man whom they have damned sets before them and proclaim it truth. They extol his eccentricities into models, his follies into virtues. Thus does hero worship work double harm.
“What is the cure? Is oblivion the only good? Is to do, to die? If I achieve must my life go out like that of certain insects who die in the act of generation? Wise men ask these questions over and over again. I give you the answer. It is this—Together man and woman were put out of Eden. Only together hand in hand can they return.