This last quotation may serve to introduce a further and a more delicate test of Shakespeare's insight into character. That a man should be able to throw himself into a variety of mind and characters among his fellow-men, may be not unreasonably expected. He has naturally a community of feelings, of passions, of temptations, and of motives with them. He can understand what is courage, what ambition, what strength or feebleness of mind. Inward observation and matured experience help much to guide him to a conception and delineation of the character of his fellow-men. But of the stronger emotions, the wilder passions, the subdued gentleness and tenderness, the heroic endurance, the meek bearing, and the saintly patience of the woman, he can have had no experience. Looking into himself for a reflection, he will probably find a blank.
It has often been said that in his female characters Shakespeare is not equal to himself. The work to which I have just alluded meets, I think completely, this objection, which, I believe, even Schlegel raises. It required a lady, with mind highly cultivated, with the nicest powers of discrimination, and with happiness of expression, to vindicate at once Shakespeare and her sex. The difficulty of this task can hardly be appreciated without the study of its performance. Its great difficulty consists in the almost family resemblance of the different portraits which make up Shakespeare's female gallery. There is scarcely any room for events, even for incident, still less for actions, say for bold and unfeminine deeds. Several of the heroines of Shakespeare are subjected to similar persecutions, and almost the same trials. In almost every one the affections and their expression have alone to interest us. From Miranda, the desert-nurtured child in the simplicity of untempted innocence, to Isabella in her cloistered virtue, or Hermione in her unyielding fortitude—there are such shades, such varying yet delicate tints, that not two of these numerous conceptions can be said to resemble another. And whence did Shakespeare derive his models? Some are lofty queens, others most noble ladies, some foreigners, some native; different types in mind and heart, as in the lineament or complexion. Where did he find them? Where did he meet them? In the cottages of Stratford, or in the purlieus of Blackfriars? Among the ladies of the court, or in the audience in his pit? No one can say—no one need say. They were the formations of his own quickened and fertile brain, which required but one stroke, one line, to sketch him a portrait to which he would give immortality. Far more difficult was this success, and not less completely was it achieved, in that character which medical writers seem hardly to believe could be but a conception. We may compare the mind of Shakespeare to a diamond pellucid, bright, and untinted, cut into countless polished facets, which, in constant movement, at every smallest change of direction or of angle caught a new reflection, so that not one of its brilliant mirrors could be for a moment idle, but by a power beyond its control was ever busy with the reflection of innumerable images, either distinct or running into one another, or repeated each so clearly as to allow him, when he chose, to fix it in his memory.
VII.
We may safely conclude that, in whatever constitutes the dramatic art in its strictest sense, Shakespeare possessed matchless sympathies with all its attributes. The next and most essential quality required for true genius is the power to give outward life to the inward conception. Without this the poet is dumb. He may be a "mute, inglorious Milton;" he cannot be a speaking, noble Shakespeare. I should think that I was almost insulting such an audience, were I to descant upon Shakespeare's position among the bards and writers of England, and of the modern world. Upon this point there can scarcely be a dissentient opinion. His language is the purest and best, his verses the most flowing and rich; and as for his sentiments, it would be difficult without the command of his own language to characterize them. No other writer has ever given such periods of sententious wisdom.
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I have spoken of genius as a gift to an individual man. I will conclude by the reflection that that man becomes himself a gift; a gift to his nation; a gift to his age; a gift to the world of all times. That same Providence which bestows greatness, majesty, abundance, and grace, no less presents, from time to time, to a people or a race, these few transcendent men who mark for it [{564}] periods no less decisively, though more nobly, than victories or conquests. On England that supreme power has lavished the choicest blessings of this worldly life; it has made it vast in dominion, matchless in strength; it has made it the arbiter of the earth, and mistress of the sea; it has made it able to stretch its arm for war to the savage antipodes, and, if it chose, its hand for peace to the utter civilized west; it has brought the produce of north and south to its feet with skill and power, to transform and to refashion in forms graceful or useful, to send them back, almost as new creations, to its very source. Industry has clothed its most barren plains with luxuriant crops, and with Titan boldness hollowed its sternest rocks, to plunder them of their ever-hidden treasures. Its gigantic strength seems but to play with every work of venturesome enterprise, till its cities seem to the stranger to overflow with riches, and its country to be overspread with exuberant prosperity.
Well, these are great and magnificent favors of an over-ruling, most benignant Power; and yet there is a boast which belongs to our country that may seem to be overlooked. Yet it is a double gift that that same creating and directing rule has made this country the birthplace and the seat of the two men who, within a short period, were made the rulers each of a great and separate intellectual dominion, never to be deposed, never to be rivalled, never to be envied. To Newton was given the sway over the science of the civilized world; to Shakespeare the sovereignty over its literature.
The one stands before us passionless and grave, embracing in his intellectual grandeur every portion of the universe, from the stars, to him invisible, to the rippling of the tiny waves which the tide brought to his feet. The host of heaven, that seemed in causeless dispersion, he marshalled into order, and bound in safest discipline. He made known to his fellow-men the secret laws of heaven, the springs of movement, and the chains of connection, which invariably and unchangeably impel and guide the course of its many worlds.
In this aspect one's imagination figures him as truly the director of what he only describes—as the leader of a complicated army, who, with his staff, seems to draw or to send forward the wheeling battalions, intent on their own errands, combining or resolving movements far remote; or, under a more benign and pleasing form, we may contemplate him, like a great master in musical science, standing in the midst of a throng, in which are mingled together the elements of sublimest harmonies, confused to the eye, but sweetly attuned to the ear, mingling into orderly combination and flowing sequence, as they float through the air, which, though he elicit not nor produce, he seems by his outstretched hand to direct, or, at least, he proves himself fully to understand. For what each one separately does, unconscious of what even his companion is doing, he from afar knows, and almost beholds, understanding from his centre the concerted and sure results of their united action. And so Newton, from his chamber on this little earth, without being able more than the most helpless insect to add power or give guidance to one single element in the composition of this universe, could trace the orbits of planet or satellite, and calculate the oscillations and the reciprocal influences of celestial spheres.