not unfit to make itself heard among
the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we
understood them, but in harmony!--I cannot call this Shakespeare a
"Sceptic," as some do; his indifference to the creeds and theological
quarrels of his time misleading them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he
says little about his Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little
about his Faith. Such "indifference" was the fruit of his greatness
withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may
call it such); these other controversies, vitally important to other
men, were not vital to him.

But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious
thing, and set of things, this that Shakespeare has brought us? For
myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact
of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all; a
blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light?--and, at bottom, was it not
perhaps far better that this Shakespeare, everyway an unconscious man,
was _conscious_ of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet,
because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was the
"Prophet of God:" and was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater;
and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more
successful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of
his supreme Prophethood; and has come down to us inextricably involved
in error to this day; dragging along with it such a coil of fables,
impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here
and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all,
and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no
Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have
exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakespeare, this
Dante may still be young;--while this Shakespeare may still pretend to
be a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited
periods to come!

Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with Aeschylus or
Homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like them?
He is _sincere_ as they; reaches deep down like them, to the universal
and perennial. But as for Mahomet, I think it had been better for him
_not_ to be so conscious! Alas, poor Mahomet; all that he was
_conscious_ of was a mere error; a futility and triviality--as indeed
such ev