Nature too goes hers. Acts of
Parliament, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise they
make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's, on the hustings
or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a
little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the
best judgment not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is
slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare'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 Shakspeare'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 Shakspeare 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
the whole matter; it is a calmly _seeing_ eye; a great intellect, in
sh