There is a certain dread of the demonstrative in the
present day, which may, perhaps, be carried into regions where it is out
of place, and hinder the development of a devotion which must be real,
and grand, and divine, if one man such as Shakspere or Tennyson has ever
felt it. If one has felt it, humanity may claim it. And surely He who is
_the_ Son of man has verified the claim. We believe there are indeed few
of us who know what _to love our neighbour as ourselves_ means; but when
we find a man here and there in the course of centuries who does, we may
take this man as the prophet of coming good for his race, his prophecy
being himself.
But next to the interest of knowing that a man could love so well, comes
the association of this fact with his art. He who could look abroad upon
men, and understand them all--who stood, as it were, in the wide-open
gates of his palace, and admitted with welcome every one who came in
sight--had in the inner places of that palace one chamber in which he
met his friend, and in which his whole soul went forth to understand the
soul of his friend. The man to whom nothing in humanity was common or
unclean; in whom the most remarkable of his artistic morals is
fair-play; who fills our hearts with a saintly love for _Cordelia_ and
an admiration of _Sir John Falstaff_ the lost gentleman, mournful even
in the height of our laughter; who could make an _Autolycus_ and a
_Macbeth_ both human, and an _Ariel_ and a _Puck_ neither human--this is
the man who loved best.
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