rrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready dedicate their lives to this
genius; him they crown, elucidate, obey, and express. The genius knows
them not. The recitation begins; one golden word leaps out immortal
from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly torments us with
invitations to its own inaccessible homes. I remember, I went once to
see the Hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of the English stage;
and all I then heard, and all I now remember, of the tragedian, was
that in which the tragedian had no part; simply, Hamlet's question to
the ghost:

What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?

That imagination which dilates the closet he writes in to the world's
dimension, crowds it with agents in rank and order, as quickly reduces
the big reality to be the glimpses of the moon. These tricks of his
magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any biography
shed light on the localities into which the _Midsummer Night's Dream_
admits me? Did Shakespeare confide to any notary or parish recorder,
sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate
creation? The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle, the
moonlight of Portia's villa, 'the antres vast and desarts idle' of
Othello's captivity,--where is the third cousin, or grand-nephew, the
chancellor's file of accounts, or private letter, that has kept one
word of those transcendent secrets? In fine, in this drama, as in all
great works of art,--in the Cyclopean architecture of Egypt and India;
in the Phidian sculpture; the Gothic minsters; the Italian painting;
the Ballads of Spain and Scotland;--the Genius draws up the ladder
after him, when the creative age goes up to heaven, and gives way to a
new age, which sees the works, and asks in vain for a history.

Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare; and even he can
tell nothing, except to the Shakespeare in us; that is, to our most
apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He cannot step from off his tripod,
and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the antique documents
extricated, analysed, and compared by the assiduous Dyce and Collier;
and now read one of those skyey sentences,--aerolites,--which seem to
have fallen out of heaven, and which, not your experience, but the man
within the breast, has accepted as words of fate; and tell me if they
match; if the former account in any manner