He
went on the stage and acted, and so gained power to reveal the genius
which he possessed; and the world, in its possible measure, was not slow
to recognize it. Many a young fellow who has entered life with the one
ambition of being a poet, has failed because he did not perceive that it
is better to be a man than to be a poet, that it is his first duty to
get an honest living by doing some honest work that he can do, and for
which there is a demand, although it may not be the most pleasant
employment. Time would have shown whether he was meant to be a poet or
not; and if he had been no poet he would have been no beggar; and if he
had turned out a poet, it would have been partly in virtue of that
experience of life and truth, gained in his case in the struggle for
bread, without which, gained somehow, a man may be a sweet dreamer, but
can be no strong maker, no poet. In a word, here is _the_ Englishman of
genius, beginning life with nothing, and dying, not rich, but easy and
honoured; and this by doing what no one else could do, writing dramas in
which the outward grandeur or beauty is but an exponent of the inward
worth; hiding pearls for the wise even within the jewelled play of the
variegated bubbles of fancy, which he blew while he wrought, for the
innocent delight of his thoughtless brothers and sisters.
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