And we believe that this depth of capacity for
loving lay at the root of all his knowledge of men and women, and all
his dramatic pre-eminence. The heart is more intelligent than the
intellect. Well says the poet Matthew Raydon, who has hardly left
anything behind him but the lamentation over Sir Philip Sidney in which
the lines occur,--
"He that hath love and judgment too
Sees more than any other do."
Simply, we believe that this, not this only, but this more than any
other endowment, made Shakspere the artist he was, in providing him all
the material of humanity to work upon, and keeping him to the true
spirit of its use. Love looking forth upon strife, understood it all.
Love is the true revealer of secrets, because it makes one with the
object regarded.
"But," say some impatient readers, "when shall we have done with
Shakspere? There is no end to this writing about him." It will be a bad
day for England when we have done with Shakspere; for that will imply,
along with the loss of him, that we are no longer capable of
understanding him. Should that time ever come, Heaven grant the
generation which does not understand him at least the grace to keep its
pens off him, which will by no means follow as a necessary consequence
of the non-intelligence! But the writing about Shakspere which has been
hitherto so plentiful must do good just in proportion as it directs
attention to him and gives aid to the understanding of him.
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