ravagant idealisation and justification of Henry
V.--which, though it gives so little pause to some of our English
critics, entitled M. Guizot to call him a mere John Bull in his ideas of
international politics--it remains disputable whether this was exactly
an expression of his own thought. It is notable that he never again
strikes the note of blatant patriotism. And the poets of that time,
further, seem to have had their tongues very much in their cheeks with
regard to their Virgin Queen; so that we cannot be sure that Shakspere,
paying her his fanciful compliment,[184] was any more sincere about it
than Ben Jonson, who would do as much while privately accepting the
grossest scandal concerning her.[185] It is certainly a remarkable fact
that Shakspere abstained from joining in the poetic out-cry over her
death, incurring reproof by his silence.[186]

However all that may have been, we find Shakspere, after his period of
pessimism, viewing life in a spirit which could be expressed in terms of
Montaigne's philosophy. He certainly shaped his latter years in
accordance with the essayist's ideal. We can conceive of no other man in
Shakspere's theatrical group deliberately turning his back, as he did,
on the many-coloured London life when he had means to enjoy it at
leisure, and seeking to possess his own soul in Stratford-on-Avon, in
the circle of a family which had already lived so long without him. But
that retirement, rounding with peace the career of manifold and intense
experience, is a main fact in Shakspere's life, and one of our main
clues to his innermost character. Emerson, never quite delivered from
Puritan prepossessions, avowed his perplexity over the fact "that this
man of men, he who gave to the science of mind a new and larger subject
than had ever existed, and planted the standard of humanity some
furlongs forward into Chaos--that he should not be wise for himself: it
must even go into the world's history that the best poet led an obscure
(!) and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement." If
this were fundamentally so strange a thing, one might have supposed that
the transcendentalist would therefore "as a stranger give it welcome."
Approaching it on another plane, one finds nothing specially perplexing
in the matter. Shakspere's personality was an uncommon combination; but
was not that what should have been looked for? And where, after all, is
the evidence that he was "not wise for himself"?