ntolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here
and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all,
and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no
Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have
exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakspeare, this Dante
may still be young;--while this Shakspeare may still pretend to be a
Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods
to come!

Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with Aeschylus or
Homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like them?
He is _sincere_ as they; reaches deep down like them, to the universal
and perennial. But as for Mahomet, I think it had been better for
him _not_ to be so conscious! Alas, poor Mahomet; all that he was
_conscious_ of was a mere error; a futility and triviality,--as indeed
such ever is. The truly great in him too was the unconscious: that he
was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak out with that great
thunder-voice of his, not by words which he _thought_ to be great, but
by actions, by feelings, by a history which _were_ great! His Koran has
become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not believe, like him,
that God wrote that! The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force
of Nature. Whatsoever is truly great in him springs up from the
_in_articulate deeps.

Well: this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be Manager of
a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of
Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks
to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account him a god,
like Odin, while he dwelt with us;--on which point there were much to
be said. But I will say rather, or repeat: In spite of the sad state
Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakspeare has actually
become among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this land of ours,
which million of Englishmen, would we not give up rather than the
Stratford Peasant? There is no regiment of highest Dignitaries that we
would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we have yet done. For our
honor among foreign nations, as an ornament to our English Household,
what item is there that we would not surrender rather than him? Consider
now, if they asked us, Will you give up your Indian Empire or your
Shakspeare, you English; never have had any Indian Empire, o