ael or of Phidias as having accomplished their work by
the power of their own individual genius; but greatness like
theirs is never more than the highest degree of an excellence
which prevails widely round it, and forms the environment in
which it grows. No single mind in single contact with the facts
of nature could have created out of itself a Pallas, a Madonna,
or a Lear: such vast conceptions are the growth of ages, the
creations of a nation's spirit; and artist and poet, filled full
with the power of that spirit, have but given them form, and
nothing more than form. Nor would the form itself have been
attainable by any isolated talent. No genius can dispense with
experience; the aberrations of power, unguided or ill-guided,
are ever in proportion to its intensity, and life is not long
enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Noble conceptions
already existing, and a noble school of execution, which will
launch mind and hand at once upon their true courses, are
indispensable to transcendent excellence; and Shakespeare's
plays were as much the offspring of the long generations who had
pioneered his road for him as the discoveries of Newton were the
offspring of those of Copernicus."

Dryden, in one of his occasional pieces, represents the Poet's ghost
as saying,

"Untaught, unpractis'd, in a barbarous age,
I found not, but created first, the stage";

and such has been the common belief. But the saying is far from true;
and Shakespeare's ghost must have sipped large draughts of Lethe, to
be capable of speaking thus. For, though the least that he did is
worth more than all that was done before him, and though his poorest
performances surpass the best of his models; it is nevertheless
certain that his task was but to continue and perfect what was already
begun. Not only were the three forms of comedy, history, and tragedy
in use on the English stage, but the elements of these were to some
extent blended in the freedom and variety of the Gothic Drama. The
usage also of dramatic blank-verse stood up inviting his adoption;
though no one before or since has come near him in the mastery of its
capabilities; his genius being an inexhaustible spring of both mental
and verbal modulation. Nor can all this be justly regarded as any
alleviation of his task, or any abatement of his fame. For, to work
thus with materials and upon models alread