What Act of Parliament,
debate at St. Stephen's,[82] on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that
brought this Shakespeare into being? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern,
opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other
jangling and true or false endeavouring! This Elizabethan Era, and all
its nobleness and blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of
ours. Priceless Shakespeare was the free gift of Nature; given
altogether silently; received altogether silently, as if it had been a
thing of little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless
thing. One should look at that side of matters too.
Of this Shakespeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a
little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the
best judgment not of this country only: but of Europe at large, is
slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakespeare is the chief of all
Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has
left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know
not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all
the characters of it, in any other man.
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