of their circle, and not being gifted with the
penetration which discerns a latent energy, but only with the vision
which discerns apparent results, they are taken by surprise. Nay, so
biased are we by superficial judgments, that we frequently ignore the
palpable fact of achieved excellence simply because we cannot reconcile
it with our judgment of the man who achieved it. The deed has been
done, the work written, the picture painted; it is before the world,
and the world is ringing with applause. There is no doubt whatever that
the man whose name is in every mouth did the work; but because our
personal impressions of him do not correspond with our conceptions of a
powerful man, we abate or withdraw our admiration, and attribute his
success to lucky accident. This blear-eyed, taciturn, timid man, whose
knowledge of many things is manifestly imperfect, whose inaptitude for
many things is apparent, can HE be the creator of such glorious works?
Can HE be the large and patient thinker, the delicate humourist, the
impassioned poet? Nature seems to have answered this question for us;
yet so little are we inclined to accept Nature's emphatic testimony on
this point, that few of us ever see without disappointment the man
whose works have revealed his greatness.

It stands to reason that we should not rightly appreciate Shakspeare if
we were to meet him simply because we should meet him as an ordinary
man, and not as the author of HAMLET. Yet if we had a keen insight we
should detect even in his quiet talk the marks of an original mind. We
could not, of course, divine, without evidence, how deep and clear his
insight, how mighty his power over grand representative symbols, how
prodigal his genius: these only could appear on adequate occasions. But
we should notice that he had an independent way of looking at things.
He would constantly bring before us some latent fact, some unsuspected
relation, some resemblance between dissimilar things. We should feel
that his utterances were not echoes. If therefore, in these moments of
equable serenity, his mind glancing over trivial things saw them with
great clearness, we might infer that in moments of intense activity his
mind gazing steadfastly on important things, would see wonderful
visions, where to us all was vague and shifting. During our quiet walk
with him across the fields he said little, or little that was
memorable; but his eye was taking in the varying forms and relations of