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.
III.
The next point which seems to claim attention is the very root of all that I have said or shall have still to say. To what does Shakespeare owe this supremacy, or whence flow all the extraordinary qualities which we attribute to him? You are all prepared with the answer in one single word his GENIUS.