great masters of literary composition. This was
the verdict pronounced by the English nation at large; and its great
political and literary leaders expressed and confirmed it, when they
gave him fortune and fame, elevated him to the peerage, bestowed on him
stars and titles, and buried him with august solemnity among those
illustrious men who gave to England its power and glory.

SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET.[3]

1564-1616.

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by
originality. If we require the originality which consists in weaving,
like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay and
making bricks and building the house; no great men are original. Nor
does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men. The hero
is in the press of knights and the thick of events; and seeing what men
want and sharing their desire, he adds the needful length of sight and
of arm to come at the desired point. The greatest genius is the most
indebted man. A poet is no rattle-brain, saying what comes uppermost,
and, because he says everything, saying at last something good; but a
heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical
and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted
with the weightiest convictions and pointed with the most determined
aim which any man or class knows of in his times.

[Footnote 3: Reprinted from "Representative Men," by permission of
Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN, AND CO., publishers of Emerson's works.]

The Genius of our life is jealous of individuals, and will not have any
individual great, except through the general. There is no choice to
genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning and say, 'I am
full of life, I will go to sea and find an Antarctic continent: to-day I
will square the circle: I will ransack botany and find a new food for
man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic
power:' no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and
events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his
contemporaries. He stands where all the eyes of men look one way, and
their hands all point in the direction in which he should go. The Church
has reared him amidst rites and pomps, and he carries out the advice
which her music gave him, and builds a cathedral needed by her chants
and processions. He finds a war raging: it educates him, by trumpet, in
barracks,