Theodore Watts, as he told me twenty years ago, holds the opinion that
Shakespeare wrote private poetry in a separate book while composing his
dramas, and that he gave such portions of it as he could make fit, to
certain of his characters. He thought, if I remember aright, that the
soliloquy and the dagger-scene were morsels of this sort. It certainly
must strike one that “the law’s delay” and “the insolence of office” were
not prominent grievances in Hamlet’s career.
When I was about eleven years old I became owner of Rowe’s “Shakespeare,”
which has in it a wonderful little life of the bard. He quotes the
marvellous passage beginning with—
“She never told her love,”
and, as far as memory serves me, it was to declare that poetry of such
exquisite beauty was not to be found in any other writer, ancient or
modern. I have since often thought that nothing in the context fairly
led up to an idea of such magnitude, and that the passage was one of
Shakespeare’s interpolations. Be this as it may, it had an elevating
effect on me which has lasted me for life; it gave me a sense of perfect
excellence. It may appear ridiculous to say that it not only made me
envious of the greatest of writers, but that it depressed me, in turn,
with the feeling that I could never equal it, however long I might live!
No other writer at that time affected me similarly, except Virgil, when
I came to that passage which depicts the breaking of the waves on the
prow of the vessel and the receding of the cities and lands (_terræque
urbesque recedunt_). After we reached our beds at night the boys were
wont to “coze” in literary cliques round some favourite tale-teller,
who would relate marvellous stories of knights and ladies, with much
about genii, fairies, and witches. Though I never heard anything to that
effect, I have always thought that Coleridge must have lent himself to
such delights for the pleasure of others, and that “Christabel” was
unconsciously an outcome of these romantic entertainments.
Many of the boys were great readers of forbidden story, and smuggled
books into the school, the penalty of which, on being found out, was
a flogging. The books in question were romances of enchanted castles;
of beautiful young women, the prisoners of tyrants; of subterraneous
passages and solitary cells. I would give much to possess a circulating
library of that day. Such a one I found at Seaford, and devoured whenever
my holidays came round. The novel, as reintroduced by Plumer Ward, and
imitated greedily by Bulwer and Disraeli, was then unknown.
“Tremaine,” like all new conceptions which are accordant with the average
mentality of great Britons, became epidemic, and floated over the reading
world as a new sensation. It was succeeded by “De Vere,” while Walter
Scott was winding up the business of romance. The success of these works
started a fresh “novel” epoch, now, too, worn out, only lingering till
such successors as Walter Besant and Louis Stevenson are ready to sweep
them from view. This is so true that it is almost a disgrace to write a
novel.
It must not, however, be forgotten that Dickens fired a bomb into library
shelves, and that Thackeray gave us his own character in novelistic shape.
All great things appear in epochs, which hitherto have had a limited
duration. Witness the rise and fall of sculpture in Greece, of epic and
drama there; of painting in Italy, beginning with Titian and Raphael as
late as the sixteenth century; of music in Germany and Italy, now on the
point of extinction. Poetry, too, has had its day from Shakespeare to
Coleridge, and is now dead. The present is the epoch of invention, and
that will die out.
Music has never been of the highest quality in a free country. The
northern nations, England, America, the great Colonies, produce no
musical genius; Italy and Germany have ceased to do so since they came
into the enjoyment of freedom.
Science itself, now rampant, is but of an epoch. But, amid all this,
religion is enduring.
Some will say, We now have the Press; that will maintain and resuscitate
all that is good or beautiful! Not so; it is but of an epoch, and is
already _blasé_. It does not lead; it only “follows the leader,” as in a
game played by a child.
Nothing that has been and has died out, will be revived. The skeleton, an
osseous Apollo, will remain, and that is all.
These dry bones cannot live, O son of man!