OW can we undertake to account

HOW

for the literary miracles of antiquity, while this great myth of the modern ages still lies at our own door, unquestioned?

This vast, magical, unexplained phenomenon which our own times have produced under our own eyes, appears to be, indeed, the only thing which our modern rationalism is not to be permitted to meddle with. For, here the critics themselves still veil their faces, filling the air with mystic utterances which seem to say, that to this shrine at least, for the footstep of the common reason and the common sense, there is yet no admittance. But how can they instruct us to take off here the sandals which they themselves have taught us to wear into the inmost sekos of the most ancient sanctities?

THE SHAKESPEARE DRAMA-its import, its limitations, its object and sources, its beginning and end-for the modern critic, that is surely now the question.

What, indeed, should we know of the origin of the Homeric poems? Twentyfive hundred years ago, when those mys

tic characters, which the learned Phenician and Egyptian had brought in vain to the singing Groek of the Heroic Ages, began, in the new modifications of national life which the later admixtures of foreign elements created, at length to be put to their true uses, that song of the nation, even in its latest form, was already old on the lips of the learned, and its origin a tradition. All the history of that wonderful individuality, wherein the inspirations of so many ages were at last united-the circumstance, the vicissitude, the poetic life that had framed that dazzling mirror of old time, and wrought in it those depths of clearness-all had gone before the art of writing and memories had found its way into Greece, or even the faculty of perceiving the actual had begun to be developed there.

And yet are the scholars of our time. content to leave this matter here, where they find it! With these poetic remains in their hands, the monuments of a genius whose date is ante-historical, are they content to know of their origin only what Alexander and Plato could know, what Solon and Pisistratus were

VOL. VII.-1

proposition and, as the explanation of a given phenomenon, when the negative or the doubt compels one to launch out for himself, in search of new positions-this, alone, might serve to account for this result, at a time when criticism, as yet, was not; when the predominant mental habit, on all ordinary questions, was still that of passive acceptance, and the most extraordinary. excitements, on questions of the most momentous interest, could only rouse the public mind to assume, temporarily, any other attitude.

And the impression which these works produced, even in their first imperfect mode of exhibition, was already so profound and extraordinary, as to give to all the circumstances of their attributed origin a blaze of notoriety, tending to enhance this positive force in the tradition. Propounded as a fact, not as a theory, its very boldness-its startling improbability-was made at once to contribute to its strength; covering, beforehand, the whole ground of attack. The wonderful origin of these works was, from the first, the predominant point in the impression they made-the prominent marvel in those marvels, around which all the new wonders, that the later criticism evolved, still continued to arrange themselves.

For the discoveries of this criticism had yet no tendency to suggest any new belief on this point. In the face of all that new appreciation of the works themselves, which was involved in them, the story of that wondrous origin could still maintain its footing;-through all the ramifications of this criticism, it still grew and inwound itself, not without vital limitation, however, to the criticism thus entangled. But these new discoveries involved, for a time, conclusions altogether in keeping with the tradition.

This new force in literature, for which books contained no precedent-this new manifestation of creative energy, with its self-sustained vitalities; with its inexhaustible prodigality, mocking nature herself; with its new grasp of the whole circuit of human aims and activities;this force, so unlike anything that scholasticism or art had ever before produced, though it came, in fact, with.the sweep of all the ages-moved with all their slow accumulation-could not account for itself to those critics, as anything but a new and mystic manifestation of nature -a new upwelling of the occult vital

forces, underlying our phenomenal existence-invading the historic order with one capricious leap, laughing at history, telling the laboring ages that their sweat and blood had been in vain.

And the tradition at hand was entirely in harmony with this conception. For, to this superhuman genius, bringing with it its own laws and intuitions from some outlying region of life, not subject to our natural conditions, and not to be included in our "philosophy," the differences between man and man, natural or acquired, would, of course, seem trivial. What could any culture, or any merely natural endowment accomplish, that would furnish the required explanation of this result? And, by way of defining itself as an agency wholly supernal, was it not, in fact, necessary that it should select, as its organ, one in whom the natural conditions of the highest intellectual manifestations were obviously, even grossly, wanting?

With this theory of it, no one need find it strange that it should pass in its selection those grand old cities, where learning sat enthroned with all her timehonored array of means and appliances for the development of mental resource -where the genius of England had hitherto been accomplished for all its triumphs-and that it should pass the lofty centres of church and state, and the crowded haunts of professional life, where the mental activities of the time were gathered to its conflicts; where, in hourly collision, each strong individuality was printing itself upon a thousand others, and taking in turn from all their impress; where, in the thick coming change of that "time-bettering age," in its crowding multiplicities, and varieties, and oppositions, life grew warm, and in the old the new was stirring, and in the many, the one; where wit, and philosophy, and fancy, and humor, in the thickest onsets of the hour, were learning to veil, in courtly phrase, in double and triple meanings, in crowding complexities of conceits and unimagined subtleties of form, the freedoms that the time had nurtured; where genius flashed up from all her hidden squrces, and the soul of the age-"the mind reflecting ages past" was collecting itself, and ready, even then, to leap forth, "not for an age, but for all time."

And, indeed, was it not fitting that this new inspiration, which was to reveal the latent forces of nature, and her scorn of

conditions-fastening her contempt for all time upon the pride of human culture at its height-was it not fitting, that it should select this moment of all others, and this locality, that it might pass by that very centre of historical influences, which the court of Elizabeth then made, that it might involve in its perpetual eclipse that immortal group of heroes, and statesmen, and scholars, and wits, and poets, with its enthroned king of thought, taking all the past for his inheritance, and claiming the minds of men in all futurity, as the scene and limit of his dominion? Yes, even hehe, whose thought would grasp the whole, and keep his grasp on it perpetualspeaks to us still out of that cloud of mockery that fell upon him, when "Great Nature" passed him by-even him with his immortal longings, with his world-wide aims, with his new mastery of her secrets, too, and his new sovereignty over her, to drop her crown of immortality-lit with the finest essence of that which makes his own page immortal-on the brow of the pet horseboy at Blackfriars-the wit and good fellow of the London link-holders, the menial attaché and elevé of the playhouse-the future actor, and joint proprietor, of the New Theatre on the Bankside.

Who quarrels with this movement? Who does not find it fitting and pleasant enough? Let the "thrice three muses" go into mourning as deep as they will for this desertion-as desertion it was-for we all know that to the last hour of his life, this fellow cared never a farthing for them, but only for his gains at their hands;-let learning hide as she best may, her baffled head in this disgracewho cares?-who does not rather laugh with great creating nature in her triumph?

At least, who would be willing to admit, for a moment, that there was one in all that cotemporary circle of accomplished scholars, and men of vast and varied genius, capable of writing these plays; and who feels the least difficulty in supposing that "this player here," as Hamlet terms him-the whole force of that outburst of scorn ineffable bearing on the word, and on that which it represented to him-who doubts that this player is most abundantly and superabundantly competent to it?

Now that the deer-stealing fire has gone out of him, now that this youthful

impulse has been taught conventional social limits, sobered into the mild, sagacious, witty "Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe," distinguished for the successful management of his own fortunes, for his upright dealings with his neighbors, too, and his facetious grace in writing," patronized by men of rank, who include his theatre among their instrumentalities for affecting the popular mind, and whose relations to him are, in fact, indentical with those which Hamlet sustains to the players of his piece, what is to hinder this Mr. Shakespeare -the man who keeps the theatre on the Bankside-from working himself into a frenzy when he likes, and scribbling out unconsciously Lears, and Macbeths, and Hamlets, merely as the necessary dialogue to the spectacles he professionally exhibits; ay, and what is to hinder his boiling his kettle with the manuscripts, too, when he has done with them, if he chooses?

What it would be madness to suppose the most magnificently endowed men of that wondrous age could accomplishits real men, those who have left their lives in it, woven in its web throughout-what it would be madness to suppose these men, who are but men, and known as such, could accomplish, this Mr. Shakespeare, actor and manager, of whom no one knows anything else, shall be able to do for you in “the twinkling of an eye," without so much as knowing it, and there shall be no words about it.

And are not the obscurities that involve his life, so impenetrably in fact, the true Shakespearean element? In the boundless sea of negations which surrounds that play-house centre, surely he can unroll himself to any length, or gather himself into any shape or attitude, which the criticism in hand may call for. There is nothing to bring up against him, with one's theories. For, here in this daylight of our modern criticism, in its noontide glare, has he not contrived to hide himself in the profoundest depths of that stuff that myths are made of? Who shall come in competition with him here? Who shall dive into the bottom of that sea to pluck his drowned honors from him?

Take, one by one, the splendid men of this Elizabethan age, and set them down with a Hamlet to write, and you will say beforehand, such an one can not do it, nor such an one,-nor he,