Prophet_, in his way; of an insight analogous to the Prophetic,
though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to this man also
divine; unspeakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven; "We are such stuff
as Dreams are made of!" That scroll in Westminster Abbey, which few read
with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. But the man sang; did
not preach, except musically. We called Dante the melodious Priest
of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call Shakspeare the still more
melodious Priest of a _true_ Catholicism, the "Universal Church" of
the Future and of all times? No narrow superstition, harsh asceticism,
intolerance, fanatical fierceness or perversion: a Revelation, so far as
it goes, that such a thousand-fold hidden beauty and divineness dwells
in all Nature; which let all men worship as they can! We may say
without offence, that there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this
Shakspeare too; not unfit to make itself heard among the still more
sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we understood them, but
in harmony!--I cannot call this Shakspeare a "Sceptic," as some do;
his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time
misleading them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he says little about
his Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little about his Faith. Such
"indifference" was the fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart
was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may call it such); these
other controversies, vitally important to other men, were not vital to
him.

But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious
thing, and set of things, this that Shakspeare has brought us? For
myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact
of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all;
a blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light?--And, at bottom, was it not
perhaps far better that this Shakspeare, every way an unconscious man,
was _conscious_ of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet,
because he saw into those internal Splendors, that he specially was the
"Prophet of God:" and was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater;
and also, if we compute strictly, as we 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, i