n the Desert',
that "innermost of the inmost, most interior of the interne",
as Mrs. Browning characterizes it, "the hidden Soul",
as Dallas characterizes it, which is projected into, and constitutes
the soul of, the Plays, and which is reached through an unconscious
and mystic sympathy on the part of him who habitually communes with
and does fealty to them. That personality, that living force,
co-operated spontaneously and unconsciously with the conscious powers,
in the creative process; and when we enter into a sympathetic communion
with the concrete result of that creative process, our own
mysterious personalities, being essentially identical with,
though less quickened than, Shakespeare's, respond, though it may be
but feebly, to his. This response is the highest result of the study
of Shakespeare's works.

It is a significant fact that Shakespearian critics and editors,
for nearly two centuries, have been a `genus irritabile',
to which genus Shakespeare himself certainly did not belong.
The explanation may partly be, that they have been too much occupied
with the LETTER, and have fretted their nerves in angry dispute
about readings and interpretations; as theologians have done
in their study of the sacred records, instead of endeavoring to reach,
through the letter, the personality of which the letter is but
a manifestation more or less imperfect. To KNOW a personality is,
of course, a spiritual knowledge--the result of sympathy,
that is, spiritual responsiveness. Intellectually it is
but little more important to know one rather than another personality.
The highest worth of all great works of genius is due to the fact
that they are apocalyptic of great personalities.

Art says, as the Divine Person said, whose personality
and the personalities fashioned after it, have transformed and moulded
the ages, "Follow me!" Deep was the meaning wrapt up in this command:
it was, Do as I do, live as I live, not from an intellectual perception
of the principles involved in my life, but through a full sympathy,
through the awakening, vitalizing, actuating power of
the incarnate Word.

Art also says, as did the voice from the wilderness,
inadequately translated, "REPENT ye, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand". (Metanoei^te h'/ggike ga\r h` Basilei/a tw^n ou'ranw^n.)
Rather, be transformed, or, as De Quincey puts it, "Wheel into
a new centre your spiritual system; GEOCENTRIC has that system been
up to this hour--tha