Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 February 1884 — THE UNAPPROACHABLE. [ARTICLE]

THE UNAPPROACHABLE.

Some Hadaoniaa Opinions of Skakspesn. The following extracts are selected from the “Lectures on Shakspeare," by Henry N. Hudson, and published by Baker & Scribner in 1848. They are characteristic utterances of the most accomplished Skakspeariat that thin oountrv has produced: Shakspeare saw too deeply into everything to feel contempt at anything. The elec trio spark of wit lurks in his very tears, and even his sighs, while coming out, instinctively wreathe themselves into jokes. Perhaps Shakspeare’s greatest glory, both as a poet and as a man, is that he was no respecter of sedts, or parties, or persons, but simply a teller of the truth. . Shakspeare not only knows what we all know, but feels what we all feel, and utters forth the feeling with the same fidelity that he does the knowledge*. Shakspeare’s all-gifted and all-grasp-ing mind greedily devoured and speedily digested whatever could please his taste, or enrich his intellect, or assist his art. For innate, unconscious purity of boul we need not look for Shakspeare’s parallel in literature. In this respect, as in respect of genius itself, he is like the sun in the heavens, alone and unapproachable. From the first nature had evidently designed and fitted Shakspeare to be a sort of mediator btween herself and her children; to bring her down to us and raise us up to her. His genius was like sunlight, which, always taking the precise form and color of the object it shines upon, makes everything else visible, but remains itself unseen. i Shakspeare has sometimes delineated downright villains and sensualists, but he has never volunteered to steal the robes of heaven for them to serve the devil in without offending decency. Shakspeare’s facilities to the words and actions of men much the same as his senses would be to their physical structure, who should perceive their whole character in their thumb nails. His thoughts seem to have warbled themselves out in music spontaneously; the words seem to have known their places and to have arranged themselves in harmonious numbers of their own accord. . He (Shakspeare) is emphatically the eye, tongue, heart of humanity, and has given voice and utterance to whatever we are and whatever we see. On all scores, indeed, he is the finest piece of work human nature has yet ajiiieved. In Shakspeare’s hands thought truly incarnates itself in words, and words become alive with the spirit of thought; into the body of language he breathes the breath of intellectual life so that the language itself becomes a living soul. His love of the true, the beautiful, and the good was simply too deep and genuine to be listening to its own voice, or carrying a looking glass before itself to gaze at its own image; apd such is ever the case with souls that are smitten with such objects. Not venturing, perhaps, to undertake the drudgery, he almost unconsciously achieved the divinity of his art. With the skeleton of a drama before him, which another could furnish as well, he could clothe it with- flesh and inform it with life which none could furnish but himself.