d hears the eternal movement, and beholds
Above him and around and at his feet,
In million-billowed consentaneousness,
The flowing, flowing, flowing of the world.

The
Making of a Shakespeare

There is nothing both wholly new and wholly true to be said concerning
Shakespeare. Eckermann, who played Boswell to Goethe's Johnson, was once
disposed to discuss Shakespeare with that great master. Alone of modern
poets Goethe has revealed a capacity in some degree comparable with that
of the myriad-minded Englishman. Yet Goethe replied to Eckermann, "We
cannot talk about Shakespeare; everything is inadequate." If the German
intellectual colossus, whose conversation bestrode the narrow world from
comparative anatomy and scientific optics to the principles of art,
could not talk of Shakespeare; if a poet whose writings, next to those
of our own unrivalled bard, are most thickly studded with great stars of
thought, could not talk of Shakespeare, what is to be said by us punier
men who are compelled to peep about for matter of discourse? "Everything
is inadequate." That perhaps is the reason why talk about Shakespeare,
even from the sanest of men, is apt to convert itself into perfervid
rhapsody. Meanwhile, from those whose sanity is less assured, it runs to
the delirium of some harebrained cipher of Shakespeare-Geheimnis, and an
amused world is asked to listen while some female Dogberry asserts that
the truth, too long concealed, has been proved, and it will soon go near
to be thought, that _Romeo and Juliet_ was written by none other than
Anne Hathaway.

I do not come before you to-night with either a rhapsody or a
mare's-nest. Nor do I come with criticism of that marvellous creator,
who, to use the bold expression of the Frenchman, _apres Dieu crea le
plus_. When, with the progress of the years, a supreme writer is read
more and more over all the world; when his plays are translated from
English into Hebrew and Japanese, and performed in Roumanian and
Hindustani, criticism should become simply a humble endeavour to realize
the various powers and beauties which constitute such triumphant
greatness.

That is my attitude to-night. To me Shakespeare--though not flawless,
because human--is the crown and consummation of literature. Ardently and
reverently as I admire Homer, AEschylus, Dante and Goethe, my mind places
even these on somewhat lower seats than the creator of _Hamlet_ and
_Othello_. My object is to