Flowers must be sown and tended with care, like children, to grow up
to maturity, but weeds grow of themselves and multiply without any
attention, choking up those flowers that require it; and lies are
propagated as easily as weeds, and choke up the blossoms of truth in
the same manner. But the evils and misrepresentations of false
criticism, though great and many, are not lasting.
* * * * *
Upon its principles fashion and flattery have made many Shakespeares,
and these false prophets have flourished and will flourish for a
season, for truth, when she cannot be heard by the opposition of
falsehood, remains silent and leaves time to decide the difference,
who cometh quietly and impartially to her assistance, hurling without
ceremony, century after century, usurper after usurper from the
throne of the mighty, and erasing their names from his altar as
suddenly and as perfectly as the sunbeam passes over and washes away
the stains of a shadow on the wall. Fame hath weighed the false
criticisms and pretensions of centuries already, and found nothing as
yet but dust in the balance. Shadows of Shakespeare are cast away as
profane idols, and reality hath fallen short of even a trinity. She
acknowledges as sacred but one, and I fear that when she shall
calculate the claims of ten centuries she will find the number of the
mighty a unit. But why should fear be expressed for a repetition
which we neither hope for nor need? We have but one sun in our
firmament, and upwards of six thousand years have neither added to
nor diminished its splendour, neither have vain desires been
expressed for the existence of another. Needless wishes create
painful expectations. When a man is warm and comfortable on a cold
day he cannot wish for an excess that would burn him. Therefore we
need neither hope for more Shakespeares nor regret that there is but
one. When the Muses created him a poet they created him the sun of
the firmament of genius, and time has proved, and will prove, that
they glory in their creation, deeming it sufficient, without striving
to find or create another, for nature knows the impossibility. There
have been, both before and after, constellations of great and
wonderful beauty, and many in this age will be found in the number
who shine in their own light with becoming splendour, but whenever
flattery or vanity places them near the great luminary their little
lights lose their splendour and they vanish in his brightness as the
stars are lost at noon.
* * * * * *
The falling stars leave a stream of splendour behind them for a
moment; then utter darkness follows, and not a spark is left to show
where they fell.
* * * * * *
It is said that Byron is not to have a monument in Westminster Abbey.
To him it is no injury. Time is his monument, on whose scroll the
name of Byron shall be legible when the walls and tombs of
Westminster Abbey shall have mingled with the refuse of ruins, and
the sun, as in scorn, be left free again to smile upon the earth so
long darkened with the pompous shadows of bigotry and intolerance.