Perhaps the most bitter political enemy of Charles I. will have the candor to allow that, for a prince of those times, he was truly and eminently accomplished. His knowledge of the arts was considerable; and, as a patron of art, he stands foremost amongst all British sovereigns to this hour. He said truly of himself, and wisely as to the principle, that he understood English law as well as a gentleman ought to understand it; meaning that an attorney's minute knowledge of forms and technical niceties was illiberal. Speaking of him as an author, we must remember that the Eikon Basilike is still unappropriated; that question is still open. But supposing the king's claim negatived, still, in his controversy with Henderson, in his negotiations at the Isle of Wight and elsewhere, he discovered a power of argument, a learning, and a strength of memory, which are truly admirable; whilst the whole of his accomplishments are recommended by a modesty and a humility as rare as they are unaffected.
NOTE 7.
The necessity of compression obliges us to omit many arguments and references by which we could demonstrate the fact, that Shakspeare's reputation was always in a progressive state; allowing only for the interruption of about seventeen years, which this poet, in common with all others, sustained, not so much from the state of war, (which did not fully occupy four of those years,) as from the triumph of a gloomy fanaticism. Deduct the twenty-three years of the seventeenth century, which had elapsed before the first folio appeared, to this space add seventeen years of fanatical madness, during fourteen of which all dramatic entertainments were suppressed, the remainder is sixty years. And surely the sale of four editions of a vast folio in that space of time was an expression of an abiding interest. No other poet, except Spenser, continued to sell throughout the century. Besides, in arguing the case of a dramatic poet, we must bear in mind, that although readers of learned books might be diffused over the face of the land, the readers of poetry would be chiefly concentred in the metropolis; and such persons would have no need to buy what they heard at the theatres. But then comes the question, whether Shakspeare kept possession of the theatres. And we are really humiliated by the gross want of sense which has been shown, by Malone chiefly, but also by many others, in discussing this question. From the Restoration to 1682, says Malone, no more than four plays of Shakspeare's were performed by a principal company in London. "Such was the lamentable taste of those times, that the plays of Fletcher, Jonson, and Shirley, were much oftener exhibited than those of our author." What cant is this! If that taste were "lamentable," what are we to think of our own times, when plays a thousand times below those of Fletcher, or even of Shirley, continually displace Shakspeare? Shakspeare would himself have exulted in finding that he gave way only to dramatists so excellent. And, as we have before observed, both then and now, it is the very familiarity with Shakspeare, which often banishes him from audiences honestly in quest of relaxation and amusement. Novelty is the very soul of such relaxation; but in our closets, when we are not unbending, when our minds are in a state of tension from intellectual cravings, then it is that we resort to Shakspeare; and oftentimes those who honor him most, like ourselves, are the most impatient of seeing his divine scenes disfigured by unequal representation, (good, perhaps, in a single personation, bad in all the rest;) or to hear his divine thoughts mangled in the recitation; or, (which is worst of all,) to hear them dishonored and defeated by imperfect apprehension in the audience, or by defective sympathy. Meantime, if one theatre played only four of Shakspeare's dramas, another played at least seven. But the grossest folly of Malone is, in fancying the numerous alterations so many insults to Shakspeare, whereas they expressed as much homage to his memory as if the unaltered dramas had been retained. The substance was retained. The changes were merely concessions to the changing views of scenical propriety; sometimes, no doubt, made with a simple view to the revolution effected by Davenant at the Restoration, in bringing scenes(in the painter's sense) upon the stage; sometimes also with a view to the altered fashions of the audience during the suspensions of the action, or perhaps to the introduction of after-pieces, by which, of course, the time was abridged for the main performance. A volume might be written upon this subject. Meantime let us never be told, that a poet was losing, or had lost his ground, who found in his lowest depression, amongst his almost idolatrous supporters, a great king distracted by civil wars, a mighty republican poet distracted by puritanical fanaticism, the greatest successor by far of that great poet, a papist and a bigoted royalist, and finally, the leading actor of the century, who gave and reflected the ruling impulses of his age.
NOTE 8.
One of the profoundest tests by which we can measure the congeniality of an author with the national genius and temper, is the degree in which his thoughts or his phrases interweave themselves with our daily conversation, and pass into the currency of the language. Few French authors, if any, have imparted one phrase to the colloquial idiom; with respect to Shakspeare, a large dictionary might be made of such phrases as "win golden opinions," "in my mind's eye," "patience on a monument," "o'erstep the modesty of nature," "more honor'd in the breach than in the observance," "palmy state," "my poverty and not my will consents, "and so forth, without end. This reinforcement of the general language, by aids from the mintage of Shakspeare, had already commenced in the seventeenth century.
NOTE 9.
In fact, by way of representing to himself the system or scheme of the English roads, the reader has only to imagine one great letter X, or a St. Andrew's cross, laid down from north to south, and decussating at Birmingham. Even Coventry, which makes a slight variation for one or two roads, and so far disturbs this decussation, by shifting it eastwards, is still in Warwickshire.
NOTE 10.
And probably so called by some remote ancestor who had emigrated from the forest of Ardennes, in the Netherlands, and now for ever memorable to English ears from its proximity to Waterloo.