Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1848-01-28
Mr.. Emerson on Shakespeare.

A'fNNE 1@f'Na ISO'N III ANDlOGthhdNlNO !
he selected as the subject of the fourth,
Shakespeare, the Poet The following ac-
count of it is from the Liverpool Albion:
The lecturer said, if we should estimate
great men, we should not find they were so
much distinguished by originality as by range
and extent. If we required Of them that alb
solute originality which consists In weaving,
like the spider, webs from their W bowels
finding clay, making bricks, and then build
ing the house-no great man were original.
Least Of all does valuable originality consist
in unlikeness to other men. He is a go-he-
tween, between the want and the satisfaction
Of the want; he stands where all men look
one way, and their hands will point the di-
r%ection in which he shall go. A great genius
finds his materials collected, and his skill is
shown in using them. What economy here,
what compensation for the shortness of life
all was done TO his hand, the world had
brought him so faron his way. The human
race had been out before him, sunk the hills,
filled the ~hollows, and bridged the rivers on
his way. Great genial power consists in not
being self-willed at all, but in being to the
greatest possible idea receptive-being imme-
diate and notwithstanding to the world to
do all.
Mr.. Emerson proceeded, with great beauty
of language, TO show that such had been the
case with Shakespeare. In his day there was
an importunate craving for dramatic enter
tainments; ga wild insurrection of genius
suddenly broke out; a host of writers catered
to the taste, and the crude warm blood of
living England circulated in the plays and
gave body to Shakspeare's @rial and majestic
fancy" The basis of his works the great
bard found already in the prompter's hooks.
and he was wise enough to know that tradi-
ton supplies a better fable than any inven-
ton can. If he lost any credit of creation,
he augmented a thousand fold his resources.
Many men say wise things as well as the
true poet; the only Inference was, that many
men say foolish things. and do not know
when they say wise. He knows the sparkle
of the true stone, and puts it by his fellow
when he finds it. Such was the happy posi-
ton of Homer perhaps, of Chaucer, and of
Sdrdi. The generic catholic genius, who is
not afraid or ashamed to owe his originality
to originality of law, stands with the next age
as the true recorder and embodiment Of his
own. Mr.. Emerson referred to the "eagle-
eyed researches" of the Shaksperian Society
and others, to learn something of Shakspesre's
external history, and 10 the little which they
had learned, and added-"Truly there is
something touching in the madness in which
the passing age mis-chooses the object on
which all candles shine and all eyes are turn
ed. The painful care with which everything
relative to Queen Elizabeth, or to the ~illustri-
Gus Raleighs, Essex, Burleighs, and Buck
inghams, are recorded to tediousness (beings
whom we could forget without any loss TO
the mind made it singular 10 us that writers
should let pass without a glance, without a
single valuable record, the founder of another
dynasty which will alone cause the Tudor
dynasty to be remembered the man who car
ried the Saxon race in him, by the inspira-
ton which feeds him, and on whose thoughts
the foremost people of the world are now and
for some ages to be nourished. A popular
player, nobody suspected that he was the
poet of the human race and the secret was
kept as faithfully from poets and intellectual
men as from %courtiers and frivolous people.
Bacon, who took an inventory of the human
understanding in his times, both what was
done and deficient in science and letters, new
er mentioned one greater than all his ~illustri-
Gus correspondents taken together.'
From the unrivalled richness in that age
Of great men, if, according to the proverb, it
needs wit to know wit, one would have
thought that the men of Shakspeare's time
could have appreciated him. Since the con-
SbClIhtlOu VI SIChh iHCh "HO dppCdltu IL tuc
age of Pericles, in Greece, there never was
such a society in the world, yet their genius
failed them to find out the best head in the
universe. Our poets music was impenetra-
BILE, his i~ncognito complete. They could not
see the mountain near. 1t took a century to
make it suspected, and not till two centuries
had passed after the death of Shakespeare, did
any criticism which we think adequate begin
TO appear. 1t was to the translation of his
works. the rapid bursts of German literature
in modern times was in a great measure to
3 be ascribed. Various parties had attempted
TO elucldate his life and works, but, said the
lecturer, the genius knows not of them. The
a moment we come at last to hear one golden
l word, it leaps out immortal from all this
= wTetched mortality, and sweetly torments us
. with lis invitations 10 its own inaccessible
home. Shakespeare is the only biographer oil
{ Shakespeare, and even he can tell nothing eX.
cept to the Shakespeare in us, and that in ouI
most apprehensive and sympathetic hour
From the internal evidence in his works
Shakespeare, instead of being the least known
was the best known OF all history. VIVA
point Of manner, morals, laws, history, reli
Il gion, or life, had he not touched upon-wha
d mystery had he not signifed his knowledg,
5, of-what Office, or function, or district O
k mems work had he not remembered to wha
king had he not taught state-what lnaidel
had not found him finer than delicacy-wha
lover had he not out-loved-what sage no
out-seen-what great man not instructed i
to the rudeness of his behaviorl
Mr. Emerson then proceeded, in glowin
m language, to indicate some of the causes c
m Shakspeare's superiority. Above all was
OF sort of eminent, omnipresent propriety, or
h. it deserves a wider name, humanity, whic
h. reduced all parts to due accordance. Ther
was no discovery Of egotism in him. Th
ne great he told greatly, the small subordinal,
fe ly, grace without emphasis. He was stron
Sc as nature, which lifts the land into mountai
as slopes, without effort, by tie same rule as
floats a bubble in the air, and looks as we
nd to do in the one as in the other. He though
h. tbara uac potbinr oon,nor,L1o !, o,