They who deny cannot, in the nature of
things, know what they deny. When one sees a chaos begin to put on the
shape of an ordered world, he will hardly be persuaded it is by the
power of a foolish notion bred in a diseased fancy.
Let the man then who would rise to the height of his being, be persuaded
to test the Truth by the deed--the highest and only test that can be
applied to the loftiest of all assertions. To every man I say, "Do the
truth you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know."
ST. GEORGE'S DAY, 1564. [Footnote: 1864.]
All England knows that this year (1864) is the three hundredth since
Shakspere was born. The strong probability is likewise that this month
of April is that in which he first saw the earthly light. On the
twenty-sixth of April he was baptized. Whether he was born on the
twenty-third, to which effect there may once have been a tradition, we
do not know; but though there is nothing to corroborate that statement,
there are two facts which would incline us to believe it if we could:
the one that he _died_ on the twenty-third of April, thus, as it were,
completing a cycle; and the other that the twenty-third of April is St.
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