A famous author says that there is some kind of immoral emanation from
the horse, and that it affects the character of every one who has
much to do with the animal. I suppose it is something like that which
suspires from the earth that is thrown out in digging a canal. Perhaps
it is possible to construct a short and shallow waterway without
stirring up enough of this badness to corrupt “all those in authority”
along the line of it, but if the enterprise is of magnitude, like the
Suez or the Panama project, results most disastrous to the morals of
all engaged in the work, excepting those who do it, will certainly
ensue, as we may soon have the happiness to observe.
A similar phenomenon is seen in the case of Shakspeare, whose
resemblance to a horse and a canal has not, I flatter myself, been
heretofore pointed out. The subtle suspiration from the work of the
great dramatist, however, attacks, not the morals, but the intellect.
It does not prostrate the sense of right and wrong, except in so far as
this is dependent on mental health; it simply lays waste the judgment
by dispersing the faculties, as the shadow of a hawk squanders a flock
of feeding pigeons. Some time we shall perhaps have an English-speaking
critic who will be immune to Shakspearitis, but as yet Heaven has not
seen fit to “raise him up.” And when we have him his inaccessibility to
the infection will do him no good, for we shall indubitably put him to
death.
The temptation to these reflections is supplied by looking into Mr.
Arlo Bates’s book, _Talks on Writing English_, where I find this
passage quoted from Jeffrey:
“Everything in him (Shakspeare) is in unmeasured abundance and
unequaled perfection—but everything so balanced and kept in
subordination as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of
another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images and
descriptions are given with such brevity and introduced with
such skill as merely to adorn without loading the sense they
accompany.... All his excellences, like those of Nature herself,
are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, support
and recommend each other.”
This is so fine as to be mostly false. It is true that Shakspeare
throws out his excellences in unmeasured abundance and all together;
and nothing else in this passage is true. His poetical conceptions,
images and descriptions are not “given” at all; they are “turned
loose.” They came from his brain like a swarm of bees. They race out,
as shouting children from a country school. They distract, stun,
confuse. So disorderly an imagination has never itself been imagined.
Shakspeare had no sense of proportion, no care for the strength of
restraint, no art of saying just enough, no art of any kind. He flung
about him his enormous and incalculable wealth of jewels with the
prodigal profusion of a drunken youth mad with the lust of spending.
Only the magnificence and value of the jewels could blind us to the
barbarian method of distribution. They dazzle the mind and confound
all the criteria of the judgment. Small wonder that the incomparable
Voltaire, French, artistic in every fiber and trained in the severe
dignities of Grecian art, called this lawless and irresponsible
spendthrift a drunken savage.
Of no cultivated Frenchman is the judgment on Shakspeare much milder;
the man’s “art,” his “precision,” his “perfection”— these are
creations of our Teutonic imaginations, heritages of the time when in
the rush-strewn baronial hall our ancestors surfeited themselves on
oxen roasted whole and drank to insensibility out of wooden flagons
holding a gallon each.
In literature, as in all else—in work, in love, in trade, in every
kind of action or acquisition the Germanic nations are gluttons and
drunkards. We want everything, as we want our food and drink, in savage
profusion. And, by the same token, we rule the world.
1903.