ts of Parliament.
King-Henrys, Queen-Elizabeths go their way; and Nature too goes hers.
Acts of Parliament, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise
they make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephens, on the
hustings or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakespeare into
being? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern, opening subscription-lists,
selling of shares, and infinite other jangling and true or false
endeavouring! This Elizabethan Era, and all its nobleness and
blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of ours. Priceless
Shakespeare was the free gift of Nature; given altogether
silently;--received altogether silently, as if it had been a thing of
little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. One
should look at that side of matters too.

Of this Shakespeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a
little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the
best judgement not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is
slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakespeare is the chief of
all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world,
has left record of himself in the way of literature. On the whole, I
know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take
all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth;
placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so
true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said,
that in the constructing of Shakespeare's Dramas there is, apart from
all other 'faculties' as they are called, an understanding manifested,
equal to that in Bacon's _Novum Organum_. That is true; and it is not
a truth that strikes every one. It would become more apparent if we
tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shakespeare's dramatic
materials, _we_ could fashion such a result! The built house seems all
so fit,--everyway as it should be, as if it came there by its own law
and the nature of things,--we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was
shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself
had made it, hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any
other man, we may call Shakespeare in this: he discerns, knows as by
instinct, what condition he works under, what his materials are, what
his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a transitory
glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of