thinks he himself would have spoken or acted on the same occasion. . . . Shakespeare approximates the remote and familiarises the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effects would probably be such as he has assigned it.” Unfortunately, after all this exalted appreciation of Shakespeare, there follow pages of ignoble criticism of faults which we of to-day find venial enough. And it must be sorrowfully acknowledged that over the whole of this immortal Preface there is an air, faint, it is true, but still perceptibly present, of condescension; Shakespeare was an actor, and in Dr. Johnson’s day, actors were still classed with vagabonds; there is the same condescension but brutally expressed, when Dr. Johnson said of Garrick, “Punch has no feelings.” Let me say that here comes in our debt to Germany; it is not our only debt, I mean in regard to Shakespeare, but our chiefest. The first voice that was raised in purely reverential tones from a seat at Shakespeare’s feet was Lessing’s. Then followed Coleridge, and the mists of condescension rolled away for ever.
There is in us all an eager and commendable curiosity to learn the incidents in the lives of notable personages, whereby we may be enabled to reanimate them and see them in their habits as they lived. In certain circumstances, may not this curiosity be pushed too far, and lead us to inquire too closely into everyday life? Is that zeal commendable that prompts the publication of letters that were never meant to be shown abroad, much less printed, where the petty foibles of the daily round, and the trivial weaknesses, and worse, of domestic life, are laid bare to those who please to listen? Is it fair? Is it gentlemanly? Does even length of time sanction such disclosures? Who can read the Paston Letters without the conscious blushes of ingenuous shame at playing the ignominious part of an eavesdropper? or at peeping through a keyhole? (In a stage Aside let me answer that I can. But thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell; and what should poor [I] do in the state of villainy?) It has always been my terror lest the facts of Shakespeare’s life should be derived from this keyhole scrutiny, and that the revelations might make us hang our heads. What mortal life, filled, as all our lives are, with low-thoughted care, can ever come up to our picture of the majestic bearing of the myriad-minded creator of these plays!
