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Article WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. ← Page 9 of 17 →
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William Shakspere.
assumed that some excellencies Avere scattered over the pages of the bard of Avon ; that his dramas , although in a crude shape , might , by judicious alteration and arrangement , be rendered palatable to the public ; that his genius Avas irregular and uncertain , UOAV developing itself under forms of extraordinary beauty , and as suddenly appearing iu barbarity and distortion .
Inimitable are the observations of Coleridge : — " Let me now proceed to destroy , as far as it may be in my poAver , the popular notion that he was a great dramatist by mere instinct ; that he grew immortal in his own despite , and sunk below men of second or third rate power , when he attempted ought beside the drama—even as bees construct their cells and manufacture their honey to admirable perfection , but would in vain attempt to build a nest . ISTow this mode of
reconciling a compelled sense of inferiority with a feeling of pride , began in a few pedants , who having read that Sophocles was the great model of tragedy , and Aristotle the infallible dictator of its rules , and finding that the Lear , Hamlet , Othello , and other masterpieces were neither in imitation of Sophocles , nor in obedience to Aristotle , ^—and not having ( with one or two exceptions ) the courage to affirm , that the delight which their country received from generation to generation , in defiance of the alterations of circumstances and habits , was wholly groundless , —took upon them , as a happy medium , and refuge , to talk of Shakspeare as a
sort ot beautiiul lusus natures , a delightful monster , —wild , indeed , and without taste or judgment , hut like the inspired idiots so much venerated in the East , uttering , amid the strangest follies , the sublimest truths . In nine places out of ten in which I find his awful name mentioned , it is with some epithet of ' wild , ' ' irregular , ' ' pure child of nature , ' & c . If all this be true , we must submit to it , though to a thinking mind it cannot but be painful to find any excellence , merely human , thrown out of all human analogyand thereby leaving us neither rules for imitationnor
, , motives to imitate;—hut if false , it is a dangerous falsehood;—for it affords a refuge to secret self-conceit , —enables a vain man at once to escape his reader ' s indignation by general swollen panegyrics , and merely by his ipse dixit to treat as contemptible , what he has not intellect enough to comprehend , or soul to feel , without assigning any reason , or referring his opinion to any demonstrative principle ;—thus leaving Shakspeare as a sort of grand Lama , adored indeed , and his very excrements prized as
relics , hut Avith no authority or real influence . I grieve that every late voluminous edition of his works wovdd enable me to substantiate the present charge with a variety of facts one-tenth of which would of themselves exhaust the time allotted to me . Every critic who has or has not made a collection of black-letter books—in itself a useful and respectable amusement , —puts on the seven-league boots of self-opinion , and strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme judge , and blind , and deaf , fills his threeounce phial at the waters of Niagara , aud determines positively the greatness of the cataract to be neither more nor less than his three-ounce phial has been able to receive . " *
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
William Shakspere.
assumed that some excellencies Avere scattered over the pages of the bard of Avon ; that his dramas , although in a crude shape , might , by judicious alteration and arrangement , be rendered palatable to the public ; that his genius Avas irregular and uncertain , UOAV developing itself under forms of extraordinary beauty , and as suddenly appearing iu barbarity and distortion .
Inimitable are the observations of Coleridge : — " Let me now proceed to destroy , as far as it may be in my poAver , the popular notion that he was a great dramatist by mere instinct ; that he grew immortal in his own despite , and sunk below men of second or third rate power , when he attempted ought beside the drama—even as bees construct their cells and manufacture their honey to admirable perfection , but would in vain attempt to build a nest . ISTow this mode of
reconciling a compelled sense of inferiority with a feeling of pride , began in a few pedants , who having read that Sophocles was the great model of tragedy , and Aristotle the infallible dictator of its rules , and finding that the Lear , Hamlet , Othello , and other masterpieces were neither in imitation of Sophocles , nor in obedience to Aristotle , ^—and not having ( with one or two exceptions ) the courage to affirm , that the delight which their country received from generation to generation , in defiance of the alterations of circumstances and habits , was wholly groundless , —took upon them , as a happy medium , and refuge , to talk of Shakspeare as a
sort ot beautiiul lusus natures , a delightful monster , —wild , indeed , and without taste or judgment , hut like the inspired idiots so much venerated in the East , uttering , amid the strangest follies , the sublimest truths . In nine places out of ten in which I find his awful name mentioned , it is with some epithet of ' wild , ' ' irregular , ' ' pure child of nature , ' & c . If all this be true , we must submit to it , though to a thinking mind it cannot but be painful to find any excellence , merely human , thrown out of all human analogyand thereby leaving us neither rules for imitationnor
, , motives to imitate;—hut if false , it is a dangerous falsehood;—for it affords a refuge to secret self-conceit , —enables a vain man at once to escape his reader ' s indignation by general swollen panegyrics , and merely by his ipse dixit to treat as contemptible , what he has not intellect enough to comprehend , or soul to feel , without assigning any reason , or referring his opinion to any demonstrative principle ;—thus leaving Shakspeare as a sort of grand Lama , adored indeed , and his very excrements prized as
relics , hut Avith no authority or real influence . I grieve that every late voluminous edition of his works wovdd enable me to substantiate the present charge with a variety of facts one-tenth of which would of themselves exhaust the time allotted to me . Every critic who has or has not made a collection of black-letter books—in itself a useful and respectable amusement , —puts on the seven-league boots of self-opinion , and strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme judge , and blind , and deaf , fills his threeounce phial at the waters of Niagara , aud determines positively the greatness of the cataract to be neither more nor less than his three-ounce phial has been able to receive . " *