Atlantic Monthly | Page 9

and acquired, far,
far above all its creations,--a spirit alone before its Maker.
The opening of "Timon" was selected on account of its artful
preparation for and relation to what it precedes. It shows the
forethought and skill of its author in the construction or opening out of

his play, both in respect to the story and the feeling; yet even here, in
this half-declamatory prologue, the poet's dramatic art is also evident.
His poet and painter are living men, and not mere utterers of so many
words. Was this from intuition?--or because he found it easy to make
them what he conceived them, and felt that it would add to the life of
his introduction, though he should scarcely bring them forward
afterwards? No doubt the mind's eye helps the mind in
character-drawing, and that appropriate language springs almost
uncalled to the pen, especially of a practised writer for the stage. But is
his scene a dream which he can direct, and which, though he knows it
all proceeds from himself, yet seems to keep just in advance of
him,--his fancy shooting ahead and astonishing him with novelties in
dialogue and situation? There are those who have experienced this
condition in sickness, and who have amused themselves with listening
to a fancied conversation having reference to subjects of their own
choosing, yet in which they did not seem to themselves to control the
cause of the dialogue or originate the particular things said, until they
could actually hear the voices rising from an indistinct whisper to plain
speech. I knew an instance, (which at least is not related in the very
curious work of M. Boismont on the "Natural History of
Hallucinations,") where an invalid, recovering from illness, could hear
for half a night the debates and doings of an imaginary association in
the next chamber, the absurdity of which often made him laugh so that
he could with difficulty keep quiet enough to listen; while occasionally
extracts would be read from books written in a style whose precision
and eloquence excited his admiration, or whose affecting solemnity
moved him deeply, though he knew perfectly well that the whole came
from his own brain. This he could either cause or permit, and could in
an instant change the subject of the conversation or command it into
silence. He would sometimes throw his pillow against the wall and say,
"Be still! I'll hear no more till daybreak!" And this has taken place
when he was in calm health in mind, and, except weakness, in body,
and broad awake. What was singular, the voices would cease at his
bidding, and in one instance (which might have startled him, had he not
known how common it is for persons to wake at an hour they fix) they
awoke him at the time appointed. Their language would bear the
ordinary tests of sanity, and was like that we see in daily newspapers;

but the various knowledge brought in, the complicated scenes gone
through, made the whole resemble intricate concerted music, from the
imperfect study of which possibly came the power to fabricate them.
That they were owing to some physical cause was shown by their
keeping a sort of cadence with the pulse, and in the fact, that, though
not disagreeable, they were wearisome; especially as they always
appeared to be got up with some remote reference to the private faults
and virtues of that tedious individual who is always forcing his
acquaintance upon us, avoid him however we may,--one's self.
Shall we suppose that Shakspeare wrote in such an opium dream as this?
Did his "wood-notes wild" come from him as tunes do from a
barrel-organ, where it is necessary only to set the machine and disturb
the bowels of it by turning? Was it sufficient for him to fore-plan the
plots of his plays, the story, acts, scenes, persons,--the general rough
idea, or argument,--and then to sit at his table, and, by some process
analogous to mesmeric manipulations, put himself into a condition in
which his genius should elaborate and shape what he, by the aid of his
poetic taste and all other faculties, had been able to rough-hew? How
far did his consciousness desert him?--only partially, as in the instance
just given, so that he marvelled, while he wrote, at his own fertility,
power, and truth?--or wholly, as in a Pythonic inspiration, so that the
frenzy filled him to his fingers' ends, and he wrote, he knew not what,
until he re-read it in his ordinary state? In fine, was he the mere conduit
of a divinity within him?--or was he in his very self, in the nobility and
true greatness of his being and the infinitude of his faculties, a living
fountain,--he, he alone, in as plain and common a sense