His works are known to all men. Bacon's are known to few. Bacon is to us impersonal precisely where his influence is greatest, and is real where he has ceased to act. We know the supple courtier, the false friend, the pliant lawyer, and the corrupt judge. But the philosopher, in the midst of whose system we stand to-day, is nearly an ideal conception.
Position gives magnitude.
While the world was rolling above Shakespeare, he was seen imperfectly. When he rose above the world, it was discovered that he was greater than the world. The most honest of his cotemporaries would scarcely have admitted this, even had they known it. But vast objects of remote altitude must be looked at a long while before they are ascertained. Ages are the telescope-tubes that must be lengthened out for Shakespeare, and generations of men serve but as single witnesses to his claims.