Biographical Essays | Page 5

Latin, to which
afterwards he added a competent study of the Greek; and finally he
became unusually learned for his rank, but the most absolute and
undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has to show. He sneers
continually at the regular built academic pedant; but he himself, though
no academic, was essentially the very impersonation of pedantry. No
thought however beautiful, no image however magnificent, could
conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed in English; but present
him with the most trivial common-places in Greek, and he unaffectedly
fancied them divine; mistaking the pleasurable sense of his own power
in a difficult and rare accomplishment for some peculiar force or beauty
in the passage. Such was the outline of his literary taste. And was it
upon Shakspeare only, or upon him chiefly, that he lavished his
pedantry? Far from it. He attacked Milton with no less fervor; he
attacked Dryden with a thousand times more. Jeremy Taylor he quoted
only to ridicule; and even Locke, the confidential friend of his
grandfather, he never alludes to without a sneer. As to Shakspeare, so
far from Lord Shaftesbury's censures arguing his deficient reputation,
the very fact of his noticing him at all proves his enormous popularity;
for upon system he noticed those only who ruled the public taste. The
insipidity of his objections to Shakspeare may be judged from this, that
he comments in a spirit of absolute puerility upon the name Desdemona,
as though intentionally formed from the Greek word for superstition. In
fact, he had evidently read little beyond the list of names in Shakspeare;
yet there is proof enough that the irresistible beauty of what little he
had read was too much for all his pedantry, and startled him
exceedingly; for ever afterwards he speaks of Shakspeare as one who,
with a little aid from Grecian sources, really had something great and
promising about him. As to modern authors, neither this Lord
Shaftesbury nor Addison read any thing for the latter years of their
lives but Bayle's Dictionary. And most of the little scintillations of
erudition, which may be found in the notes to the Characteristics, and
in the Essays of Addison, are derived, almost without exception, and
uniformly without acknowledgment, from Bayle. [Endnote: 5]
Finally, with regard to the sweeping assertion, that "for nearly a
hundred years after his death Shakspeare was almost entirely

neglected," we shall meet this scandalous falsehood, by a rapid view of
his fortunes during the century in question. The tradition has always
been, that Shakspeare was honored by the especial notice of Queen
Elizabeth, as well as by that of James I. At one time we were disposed
to question the truth of this tradition; but that was for want of having
read attentively the lines of Ben Jonson to the memory of Shakspeare,
those generous lines which have so absurdly been taxed with faint
praise. Jonson could make no mistake on this point; he, as one of
Shakspeare's familiar companions, must have witnessed at the very
time, and accompanied with friendly sympathy, every motion of royal
favor towards Shakspeare. Now he, in words which leave no room for
doubt, exclaims,
"Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet
appear; And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did
take Eliza and our James."
These princes, then, were taken, were fascinated, with some of
Shakspeare's dramas. In Elizabeth the approbation would probably be
sincere. In James we can readily suppose it to have been assumed; for
he was a pedant in a different sense from Lord Shaftesbury; not from
undervaluing modern poetry, but from caring little or nothing for any
poetry, although he wrote about its mechanic rules. Still the royal
imprimatur would be influential and serviceable no less when offered
hypocritically than in full sincerity. Next let us consider, at the very
moment of Shakspeare's death, who were the leaders of the British
youth, the principes juventutis, in the two fields, equally important to a
great poet's fame, of rank and of genius. The Prince of Wales and John
Milton; the first being then about sixteen years old, the other about
eight. Now these two great powers, as we may call them, these
presiding stars over all that was English in thought and action, were
both impassioned admirers of Shakspeare. Each of them counts for
many thousands. The Prince of Wales [Endnote: 6] had learned to
appreciate Shakspeare, not originally from reading him, but from
witnessing the court representations of his plays at Whitehall.
Afterwards we know that he made Shakspeare his closet companion,
for he was reproached with doing so by Milton. And we know also,

from the just criticism pronounced upon the character and diction of
Caliban by one of