the world; Shakspeare, wide, placid,
far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy produced the
one world-voice; we English had the honor of producing the other.

Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us.
I think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is
this Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for
deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a Poet! The woods
and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough
for this man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English
Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as
of its own accord? The "Tree Igdrasil" buds and withers by its own
laws,--too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every
bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir
Thomas Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not
sufficiently considered: how everything does co-operate with all; not
a leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and
stellar systems; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung
withal out of all men, and works sooner or later, recognizably or
irrecognizable, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap and
influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the lowest
talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion of the
whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the Kingdoms of
Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest Heaven--!

In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with its
Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded
it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The
Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this
Practical Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it
now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact
in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age
Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish
it, before Shakspeare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance.
He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with
Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him forth; taking
small thought of Acts of Parliament. King Henrys, Queen Elizabeths go
their way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Parliament, on the whole,
are s