thing like noble
simplicity seems boorish and rude. The latter impropriety is now
abolished: but, on the other hand, our poets and artists, if they
would hope for our approbation, must, like servants, wear the livery
of distant centuries and foreign nations. We are everywhere at home
except at home. We do ourselves the justice to allow that the present
mode of dressing, forms of politeness, etc., are altogether
unpoetical, and art is therefore obliged to beg, as an alms, a
poetical costume from the antiquaries. To that simple way of thinking,
which is merely attentive to the inward truth of the composition,
without stumbling at anachronisms or other external inconsistencies,
we cannot, alas! now return; but we must envy the poets to whom it
offered itself; it allowed them a great breadth and freedom in the
handling of their subject.

Many things in Shakespeare must be judged of according to the above
principles, respecting the difference between the essential and the
merely learned costume. They will also in their measure admit of an
application to Calderon.

So much with respect to the spirit of the age in which Shakespeare
lived, and his peculiar mental culture and knowledge. To me he appears
a profound artist, and not a blind and wildly luxuriant genius. I
consider, generally speaking, all that has been said on the subject a
mere fable, a blind and extravagant error. In other arts the assertion
refutes itself; for in them acquired knowledge is an indispensable
condition of clever execution. But even in such poets as are usually
given out as careless pupils of nature, devoid of art or school
discipline, I have always found, on a nearer consideration of the
works of real excellence they may have produced, even a high
cultivation of the mental powers, practice in art, and views both
worthy in themselves and maturely considered. This applies to Homer as
well as to Dante. The activity of genius is, it is true, natural to
it, and, in a certain sense, unconscious; and, consequently, the
person who possesses it is not always at the moment able to render an
account of the course which he may have pursued; but it by no means
follows that the thinking power had not a great share in it. It is
from the very rapidity and certainty of the mental process, from the
utmost clearness of understanding, that thinking in a poet is not
perceived as something abstracted, does not wear the appearance of
reflex meditation. That notion of p