He is the grandest thing we have yet done. For our
honour among foreign nations, as an ornament to our English Household,
what item is there that we would not surrender rather than him? Consider
now, if they asked us, Will you give-up your Indian Empire or your
Shakespeare, you English; never have had any Indian Empire, or never
have had any Shakespeare? Really it were a grave question. Official
persons would answer doubtless in official language; but we, for our
part too, should not we be forced to answer: Indian Empire, or no Indian
Empire; we cannot do without Shakespeare! Indian Empire will go, at any
rate, some day; but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts forever with
us; we cannot give-up our Shakespeare!
Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him merely as a real,
marketable, tangibly-useful possession. England, before long, this
Island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the English: in
America, in New Holland,[85] east and west to the very Antipodes, there
will be a Saxondom covering great spaces of the Globe.
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