The sound of any action without
him, struck in him just the chord which, in motion in him, would have
produced a similar action. When anything was done, he felt as if he were
doing it--perception and origination conjoining in one consciousness.
But to this gift was united the gift of utterance, or representation.
Many a man both receives and generates who, somehow, cannot represent.
Nothing is more disappointing sometimes than our first experience of the
artistic attempts of a man who has roused our expectations by a social
display of familiarity with, and command over, the subjects of
conversation. Have we not sometimes found that when such a one sought to
give vital or artistic form to these thoughts, so that they might not be
born and die in the same moment upon his lips, but might _exist_, a
poor, weak, faded _simulacrum_ alone was the result? Now Shakspere was a
great talker, who enraptured the listeners, and was himself so rapt in
his speech that he could scarcely come to a close; but when he was alone
with his art, then and then only did he rise to the height of his great
argument, and all the talk was but as the fallen mortar and stony chips
lying about the walls of the great temple of his drama.
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