And, to turn to another great art, when Mozart closed his last uncompleted score, and laid him down to pass from the regions of earthly to those of heavenly music, which none had so closely approached as he, the science over which he ruled could find no strains in which worthily to mourn him except his own, and was compelled to sing for the first time his own marvelous requiem at his funeral. [Footnote 101]
[Footnote 101: The same may be said of the celebrated Cimarosa.]
No less can it be said that when the pen dropped from Shakespeare's hand, when his last mortal illness mastered the strength of even his genius, the world was left powerless to describe in writing his noble and unrivalled characteristics. Hence we turn back upon himself, and endeavor to draw from his own works the only true records of his genius and his mind. [Footnote 102]
[Footnote 102: Even in his lifetime this seems to have been foreseen. In 1664, in an epigram addressed to "Master William Shakespeare," and first published by Mr. Halliwell, occurred the following lines: "Besides in places thy wit windes like Maeander. When (whence) needy new composers borrow more Thence (than) Terence doth from Plautus or Menander, But to praise thee aright I want thy store. Then let thine owne words thine owne worth upraise And help t' adorne thee with deserved baies." Halliwell's Life of Shakespeare, p. 160.]
We apply to him phrases which he has uttered of others; we believe that he must have involuntarily described himself, when he says,
"Take him all in all,
We shall not look upon his like again;"
or that he must even consciously have given a reflection of himself when he so richly represents to us "the poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling." ("Midsummer-Night's Dream," act v., scene 1.)
But in fact, considering that the character of a man is like that which he describes, "as compounded of many simples extracted from many objects" ("As You Like It," act iv., scene 1), we naturally seek for those qualities which enter into his composition; we look for them in his own pages; we endeavor to cull from every part of his works such attributions of great and noble qualities to his characters, and unite them so as to form what we believe is his truest portrait. In truth, no other author has perhaps existed who has so completely reflected himself in his works as Shakespeare. For, as artists will tell us that every great master has more or less reproduced in his works characteristics to be found in himself, this is far more true of our greatest dramatist, whose genius, whose mind, whose heart, and whose entire soul live and breathe in every page and every line of his imperishable works. Indeed, as in these there is infinitely greater variety, and consequently greater versatility of power necessary to produce it, so must the amount of elements which enter into is composition represent changeable yet blending qualities beyond what the most finished master in any other art an be supposed to have possessed.
The positive and directly applicable materials which we possess for constructing a biography of this our greatest writer, are more scanty than have been collected to illustrate the life of many an inferior author. His contemporaries, his friends, perhaps admirers, have left us but few anecdotes of his life, and have recorded but few traits of either his appearance or his character. Those who immediately succeeded him seem to have taken but little pains to collect early traditions concerning him, while yet they must have been fresh in the recollections of his fellow-countrymen, and still more of his fellow-townsmen. [Footnote 103]