How very manifestly well did not Montaigne (I think it was) say in
his essay upon Value that the “inner part of Poesy is whilom hid,
whilom bare, and it matters little whether it be bare or hidden.”
That was a sentence such as our Wordsworth might have quoted at
the high court of Plato when the poets were arraigned as unworthy
to be rooted in his Republic. For the most part these dear poets
of our tongue will rather have it bare than hidden, leaving the
subtleties of “The Misanthrope” to another race, and themselves
preferring the straight verbal stab of “The Idiot Boy” or “Danny
Deever;” so that many of us see nothing in the Rhymed Heroics of
the Grand Siècle. Yet Molière also had genius.
“Molière a du génie et Christian été beau.”
That sentence given nasally by a Coquelin to a theatre-full
of People of the Middle-Class should convince also us of the
Hither-North that flowers may blow in any season and be as various
as multiplicity may.
William Shakespeare, without all question and beyond any repining,
is--or rather was--the first of our Poets, and was--or rather
is--the first to-day. So that, with him for a well and the
Jacobean Bible for a further spring of effort, our English Poets
make up (“build” Milton called it) the sounding line. But William
Shakespeare also is of us: he will have it on the surface or not at
all; as a man hastening to beauty, too eager to delve by the way.
And with it all how he succeeds! What grace and what appreciation
in epithet, what subtle and sub-conscious effects of verb! What
resonant and yet elusive diction! It is true Shakespeare, that
line--
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.”