t. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the world;
Shakspeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of
the world. Italy produced the one world-voice; we English had the
honour of producing the other.

Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us.
I think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is this
Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for
deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a Poet! The woods
and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough
for this man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English
Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as
of its own accord? The 'Tree Igdrasil' buds and withers by its own
laws,--too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and
every bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir
Thomas Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not
sufficiently considered: how everything does cooeperate with all; not a
leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and
stellar systems; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung withal
out of all men, and works sooner or later, recognisably or
irrecognisably, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap and
influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the
lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion
of the whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the
Kingdoms of Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest
Heaven!--

In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with
its Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded
it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The
Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced
this Practical Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then,
as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital
fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that
Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament
could abolish it, before Shakspeare, the noblest product of it, made
his appearance. He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her
own time, with Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him
forth; taking small thought of Acts of Parliament. King-Henrys,
Queen-Elizabeths go their way; and