r overlook some essential palliation. He must be utterly
without anger, utterly without purpose; for if a man has any serious
purpose in life, that which runs counter to it, or is foreign to it,
will be looked at frowningly or carelessly by him. Shakespere was
forbidden of Heaven to have any _plans_. To _do_ any good or _get_ any
good, in the common sense of good, was not to be within his permitted
range of work. Not, for him, the founding of institutions, the
preaching of doctrines, or the repression of abuses. Neither he, nor the
sun, did on any morning that they rose together, receive charge from
their Maker concerning such things. They were both of them to shine on
the evil and good; both to behold unoffendedly all that was upon the
earth, to burn unappalled upon the spears of kings, and undisdaining,
upon the reeds of the river.

Sec. 29. Therefore, so far as nature had influence over the early training
of this man, it was essential to his perfectness that the nature should
be quiet. No mountain passions were to be allowed in him. Inflict upon
him but one pang of the monastic conscience; cast upon him but one cloud
of the mountain gloom; and his serenity had been gone for ever--his
equity--his infinity. You would have made another Dante of him; and all
that he would have ever uttered about poor, soiled, and frail humanity
would have been the quarrel between Sinon and Adam of Brescia,--speedily
retired from, as not worthy a man's hearing, nay, not to be heard
without heavy fault. All your Falstaffs, Slenders, Quicklys, Sir Tobys,
Lances, Touchstones, and Quinces would have been lost in that.
Shakespere could be allowed no mountains; nay, not even any supreme
natural beauty. He had to be left with his kingcups and
clover;--pansies--the passing clouds--the Avon's flow--and the
undulating hills and woods of Warwick; nay, he was not to love even
these in any exceeding measure, lest it might make him in the least
overrate their power upon the strong, full-fledged minds of men. He
makes the quarrelling fairies concerned about them; poor lost Ophelia
find some comfort in them; fearful, fair, wise-hearted Perdita trust the
speaking of her good will and good hostess-ship to them; and one of the
brothers of Imogen confide his sorrow to them,--rebuked instantly by his
brother for "wench-like words;[111]" but any thought of them in his
mighty men I do not find: it is not usually in the nature of such men;
and if he had loved th