The Sun.
London, England, 1850-04-23 00:00:00

Colonies were received yesterday at the Colonial-
office.

WILLIAM SIIAKSPERE.
(From the First Number of the Leatnington
On this day two-hundred-and-eighty years ago, in a
humble apartment in a neighbouring town, was born the
greatest benefactor to the mind of modern Europe—
William Shakspero.
It is only fitting, therefore, that the pages of a War-
wickshire megazine, commencing existence on this aus-
picious day, should contain acme utterance of gratitude
and praise, however feebly and imperfectly expressed, to
him who has not only made the county famous which
gave him to the world, but whose life labour,—more
perhaps than any other single circumstance,—has made
the country of his birth hallowed ground to all the
civilized nations of the earth. For, wherever the light
of modern civilization hai penetrated, the name of Wil-
liam Shakspere has been borne, refulgent with the
benignant radiance; and wherever, among modern na-
tions, the human intellect'has found noblest utterance,
how much of the voice and thought of Shakspere
min-
gles with the strain? Not only in England, America,
India, and all the wide scattered colonies wherein men
speak the language that Shakspere spoke; but
throughout thoughtful Germany, quick-feeling
France, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, with their sus-
ceptibilities keen as their icy winters, and
warm as their genial summers;—nay, throughout
even effete Spain and Portugal, and mingling with the
splendid barbarism of the regions of the Shah, the Sul
lan, and the Czar, we hear the echoes of Shakspere's
voice, and find his thoughts distilling through the hearts
and minds of all these nations—civilising, purifying,
elevating them all! Not to speak it profanely, and with
the liveliest recollection of what we owe to Homer, Mil-
ton, Chaucer, Dante, and him whose death-dair was that
of bur Shakspere, as his genial genius..wasi G kindred
birth, Ccavantes;—not ungrateful to the many other
great, but lesser minds, to whom of lath years we owe
so much of elevation and delight—not to speak ft pro
fanely—to no other book except the Bible are the heart
and spirit of man so much indebted as to that which
Shakspere wrote.
It is the fashion of very distinguished men now-a-
days to say, that Shakspere's was a mind, whose gran-
deur was unseen in his own, and the immediate succeed-

ing times; and that, as we must recede from a mountain
some considerable distance in order to perceive all its
magnitude, so it is wily at this distance of time, and
with the aid of modern optics that his vastness and
grandeur come into full view. A compliment we suspect,
this, to modern powers of vision, rather than to Shak.-
pere's genius or times! If Shakspere had been so
little appreciated, as American Emereon and some score
or two of the Poet's editors would have us believe,
whence arose the glorious first folio editions of his
works—the " tall copies" which honk antiquaries are at
this moment hunting for all over England, as for price-
less gems? How is it that there never was a time since
Shakspere wrote, but that copies of his works were
in demand, and booksellers were found to bring
forth new editions, and hire new commentators :to
wrap-up like royal undertakers the illustrious
remains in lead? They say—our great modern
essayists on Shakspere—that he was a man whom
Lord Bacon, his contemporary, never mentions in his
inventory of the men of genius of his epoch, that Ben
Jenson, though he knew and somewhat admired him,
uttered at his death merely a sonnet in his praise, ear-
ticularizing the fact that the dead immortal " had small
Latin and less Greek;" and that Sir Henry Wotton, who
lived during the whole of Shakspere's manhood, and was
firniliar, for upwards of twenty years after his death,
with all the distinguished men of that brilliant time,
never speaks of him the noblest of them all.
These great modern essayists farther say, that Cole-
ridge and Goethe ate the " only critics who have ex-
pressed our convictions with anything like adequate
fidelity," and that former critics have been quite feeble
in their appreciation of Shakspere. It may be very
true that the outburst cf modern German literature
took place shortly alter Leasing had introduced, and
Wieland and Schlegel had translated, him into that
language,—and it is doubtless true that none more
profoundly than Coleridge—" the rapt one of the god-
like forehead, the Heaven-eyed creature,"—dived into
the mind of Shakspere, brought from its serene
depths the glorious gems that sparkle there, and held
them al, ft to the common gaze of men. But it is just us
great a mistake, in our humble judgment, to ascribe
to the present age or to modern writers the full appre-
ciation of Shakspere's genius, as it was to ascribe the
acknowledgment of the excellence cf Milton's " Para-
dise Lost" to the Saturday papers of Addison in the
Spectator. In both cases the effect is taken for the
cause, and that cause was the exceeding and acknow-
ledged excellence of Shakspere and Milton. No, we
cannot join iu this compliment to our own times, at the
expense of all those which have intervened between
us and Shakspere. The echo of his voice has been
heard—melodiously loud—through all these ages. True,
it sounds louder to our ears at present, because we, the
modern li,teners, are in the focus of the modern reflec-
tors of the sound. We hear only or chiefly the voices
of our own small circle of time. But, at any period
during the last century, editions, selections, beauties of
Shakspere', have been issued, appropriately prefaced by—
At no period of time has the study of Shakspere been
so universal as at present: nor is there any circumstance
more honourable to the good taste of the public." At
all times during the last, reading, century in England, of
Shakspere's book it has been said—
" Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale
Its infinite variety."
And if, during the present volcanic times in literature,
editions of Shakspere, by the names of octavo, duode-
cimo, pocket, diamond, and pearl, follow each other
quick, thick and heavy like a thunder shower,"—this
is no proof that Shakspere is better appreciated now than
he was in the times of Raleigh, Southampton, Addison,
Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, any more than the feet
hat millions of Bibles issue from the press now, for hun-
dreds that were printed two centuries ago, is any proof
that the heart of England is more religious now than
then. Alas, no ! What proof indeed—except the
greater demand for his works, arising from the increase
in the population returns—is there that Shakspere is
more or to much appreciated as of yore ? Are
we to find it iu the fact that the house
in which he was born—the Pilgrim Shrine of
genius, and of all lovers of genius for two centuries—is at
this moment in pawn? Are we to discover proof that
the present enlightened, wealthy age, fitly appreciates
and worships this bright peculiar star of the intellect of
England, in the circumstance that after worlds of
anxious endeavour on the part of local and national
committees; after feasts, fetes, lectures, processions;
superhuman efforts of amateur dramatic novelists; a
literary Cabinet Minister made ono of the custodiers of
the immortal relics; ,Houses of Parliament stirred on the
topic; active agitation throughout the country, many
dinners eaten and digested; nay the whole English and
American press roused into paragraphic eloquence,—the
object to be effected, the buying of a poor little brick house
in Stratford-on-Avon, is absolutely not yet achieved? All
this enthusiasm and sentiment, all this Parliamentary
and alter-dinner eloquence—all this playing of plays by
gentlemen dramatists—if all this has really resulted in
our vast, intellectual, wealthy England, in the fact, that,
after all, this little brick house where Shakspere was
born, cannot be got out of the hands of the mortgagee
for the want of four hundred pounds ; if, this is, as it is,
the melancholy, pitiful, ridiculous fact, what pretence
have we for saying that we reverence and love Shak-
spere more than our fathers, or that we love or rever-
ence him at all ?
" Such graves as his are Pilgrim Shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined ;
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind."
Yet, excepting the circumstance that two ladies
(while the old woman who kept the house was out) stole
away a portion of the poet's mantel-piece, and that many
royal, noble, literary, ;and other notabilities, have
cheaply done honour to themselvei by recording their
names in his visitors' book; and except that the Ameri-
cana have taken the opportunity of 'displaying their me-
fortunate peculiar national vanity by placarding with
unknown names—in large letters—the spots in the old
whitewashed wall of Shakszere's house, whereon better
known names previously existed—eicept, inshort, for
the various methods by. which people speaking the
English language have tried to make the house, name,
reputation, centrality of Shakspere, subservient in seve-
ral shapes to their own little personal glory, what proof
have we that men really reverence that shrine, or are
willing that it should be held in reverence? Well may
Sheridan Knowles; in despair and disgust, turn to the
highest shrine, seeing how the best earthly one is dose-
crated and deserted;—forgetting however that, howso-
ever robbed of its Easter dues, and unhonoured by the
wealthy and the great (by the only honour they have it
in their power to give), from the shrine of Shakspere
issued more sayings in harmony with the Bible, and
more truths which have kept Euglishmen (bad as we
are) in harmony with the Bible, than ever issued
from any other earthly shrine or Prophet of
modern centuries. How much we owe to the
Bible for our escape Irons the perilous experiments of
revolutionary France and Germany, some of us know
and acknowledge;—what we owe to Shakspere, as an
auxiliary and expounder of the Divine Truth, few
acknowledge, and yet (with all deference to those au-
thorised expounders of that Truth who seem to deny
the beneficent influence of Shakspere in this matter)--we
believe that to him too—to his geniality, morality, and
piety—is, in no small degree, to be ascribed our escape
from the heartless, impious, unsocial dogmas which are
desolating continental society in our own days.
No, we do not believe that Shakspere was less ho-
noured' in his own, or any intervening age, than he is
now. Even the cold-eyed Queen Elizabeth,—stiff,
stately, and distant as she was,—found the icyness of her
nature thaw beneath the genial warmth of Sha.kspereo,
genius;—she, who honoured few, honoured him. Spite
of the spirit of the age which made men think it
some sacrifice for a mortal coronetted Lord to associate
with the immortal son of a wool-comber, he had men of
honour and title among his friends. Now, how is it with
our Queen? How with Lord Carlisle and his peers? Let
the 4001. mortgage on Shakspere's birth-place reply.
Our own belief is that neither Queen Bess nor Lord
uthampton would have consented to this national dis-
grace; and would not only have purchased the humble
glorious bfiek-house, but have provided some pleasant