d him assiduously, with the complete
apparatus of criticism, for a hundred years, and they do not understand
the plainest words of all his teaching.

In England he has always been understood; and it is only fair, to him
and to ourselves, to add that he has never been regarded first and
foremost as a national poet. His humanity is too calm and broad to
suffer the prejudices and exclusions of international enmities. The
sovereignty that he holds has been allowed to him by men of all parties.
The schools of literature have, from the very first, united in his
praise. Ben Jonson, who knew him and loved him, was a classical scholar,
and disapproved of some of his romantic escapades, yet no one will ever
outgo Ben Jonson's praise of Shakespeare.

Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not-of an ago, but for all time!

The sects of religion forget their disputes and recognize the spirit of
religion in this profane author. He cannot be identified with any
institution. According to the old saying, he gave up the Church and took
to religion. Ho gave up the State, and took to humanity. The formularies
and breviaries to which political and religious philosophers profess
their allegiance were nothing to him. These formularies are a convenient
shorthand, to save the trouble of thinking. But Shakespeare always
thought. Every question that he treats is brought out of the realm of
abstraction, and exhibited in its relation to daily life and the minds
and hearts of men. He could never have been satisfied with such a smug
phrase as 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. His mind
would have been eager for details. In what do the greatest number find
their happiness? How far is the happiness of one consistent with the
happiness of another? What difficulties and miscarriages attend the
business of transmuting the recognized materials for happiness into
living human joy? Even these questions he would not have been content to
handle in high philosophic fashion; he would have insisted on instances,
and would have subscribed to no code that is not carefully built out of
case-law. He knew that sanity is in the life of the senses; and that if
there are some philosophers who are not mad it is because they live a
double life, and have consolations and resources of which their books
tell you nothing. It is the part of their life which they do not think
it worth their while to ment