Not in disharmony with these, if we
understood them, but in harmony!--I cannot call this Shakespeare a
"Sceptic," as some do; his indifference to the creeds and theological
quarrels of his time misleading them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he
says little about his Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little
about his Faith. Such "indifference" was the fruit of his greatness
withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may
call it such); these other controversies, vitally important to other
men, were not vital to him.
But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious
thing, and set of things, this that Shakespeare has brought us? For
myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact
of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all; a
blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light?--and, at bottom, was it not
perhaps far better that this Shakespeare, everyway an unconscious man,
was _conscious_ of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet,
because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was the
"Prophet of God:" and was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater;
and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more
successful.
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