Biographical Essays | Page 7

vilest
alteration, it ought in candor to be considered that possession is nine
points of the law. He who would not have introduced, was often
obliged to retain.

Finally, it is urged, that the small number of editions through which
Shakspeare passed in the seventeenth century, furnishes a separate
argument, and a conclusive one against his popularity. We answer, that,
considering the bulk of his plays collectively, the editions were not few.
Compared with any known case, the copies sold of Shakspeare were
quite as many as could be expected under the circumstances. Ten or
fifteen times as much consideration went to the purchase of one great
folio like Shakspeare, as would attend the purchase of a little volume
like Waller or Donne. Without reviews, or newspapers, or
advertisements, to diffuse the knowledge of books, the progress of
literature was necessarily slow, and its expansion narrow. But this is a
topic which has always been treated unfairly, not with regard to
Shakspeare only, but to Milton, as well as many others. The truth is, we
have not facts enough to guide us; for the number of editions often tells
nothing accurately as to the number of copies. With respect to
Shakspeare it is certain, that, had his masterpieces been gathered into
small volumes, Shakspeare would have had a most extensive sale. As it
was, there can be no doubt, that from his own generation, throughout
the seventeenth century, and until the eighteenth began to
accommodate, not any greater popularity in him, but a greater taste for
reading in the public, his fame never ceased to be viewed as a national
trophy of honor; and the most illustrious men of the seventeenth
century were no whit less fervent in their admiration than those of the
eighteenth and the nineteenth, either as respected its strength and
sincerity, or as respected its open profession. [Endnote: 7]
It is therefore a false notion, that the general sympathy with the merits
of Shakspeare ever beat with a languid or intermitting pulse.
Undoubtedly, in times when the functions of critical journals and of
newspapers were not at hand to diffuse or to strengthen the impressions
which emanated from the capital, all opinions must have travelled
slowly into the provinces. But even then, whilst the perfect organs of
communication were wanting, indirect substitutes were supplied by the
necessities of the times, or by the instincts of political zeal. Two
channels especially lay open between the great central organ of the
national mind, and the remotest provinces. Parliaments were
occasionally summoned, (for the judges' circuits were too brief to

produce much effect,) and during their longest suspensions, the nobility,
with large retinues, continually resorted to the court. But an intercourse
more constant and more comprehensive was maintained through the
agency of the two universities. Already, in the time of James I., the
growing importance of the gentry, and the consequent birth of a new
interest in political questions, had begun to express itself at Oxford, and
still more so at Cambridge. Academic persons stationed themselves as
sentinels at London, for the purpose of watching the court and the
course of public affairs. These persons wrote letters, like those of the
celebrated Joseph Mede, which we find in Ellis's Historical Collections,
reporting to their fellow-collegians all the novelties of public life as
they arose, or personally carried down such reports, and thus conducted
the general feelings at the centre into lesser centres, from which again
they were diffused into the ten thousand parishes of England; for, (with
a very few exceptions in favor of poor benefices, Welch or Cumbrian,)
every parish priest must unavoidably have spent his three years at one
or other of the English universities. And by this mode of diffusion it is,
that we can explain the strength with which Shakspeare's thoughts and
diction impressed themselves from a very early period upon the
national literature, and even more generally upon the national thinking
and conversation.[Endnote: 8]
The question, therefore, revolves upon us in threefold difficulty--How,
having stepped thus prematurely into this inheritance of fame, leaping,
as it were, thus abruptly into the favor alike of princes and the enemies
of princes, had it become possible that in his native place, (honored still
more in the final testimonies of his preference when founding a family
mansion,) such a man's history, and the personal recollections which
cling so affectionately to the great intellectual potentates who have
recommended themselves by gracious manners, could so soon and so
utterly have been obliterated?
Malone, with childish irreflection, ascribes the loss of such memorials
to the want of enthusiasm in his admirers. Local researches into private
history had not then commenced. Such a taste, often petty enough in its
management, was the growth of after ages. Else how came Spenser's
life and fortunes to