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 ever is. The truly great in him too was the unconscious:
that he was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak out with
that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he _thought_ to be
great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history which _were_ great!
His Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not
believe, like him, that God wrote that! The Great Man here too, as
always, is a Force of Nature: whatsoever is truly great in him springs
up from the _in_articulate deeps.

* * * * *

Well: this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be Manager of
a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of
Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many
thanks to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account
him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us;--on which point there
were much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat: In spite of
the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakespeare
has actually become among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this
land of ours, which million of Englishmen, would we not give up rather
than the Stratford Peasant? There is no regiment of highest
Dignitaries that we would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we