Shakspere, Personal Recollections | Page 3

brain and came out fine flour, ready for use by the
theatrical bakers. With the pen of pleasure and brush of fancy he
painted human life in everlasting colors, that will not fade or tarnish
with age or wither with the winds of adversity. The celestial sunlight of
his genius permeated every object he touched and lifted even the vulgar
vices of earth into the realms of virtue and beauty.
Shakspere was an intellectual atmosphere that permeated and enlivened
the world of thought. His genius was as universal as the air, where
zephyr and storm moved at the imperial will of this Grand Master of
human passions.
Principles, not people, absorbed the mammoth mind of Shakspere, who
paid little attention to the princes and philosophers of his day. Schools,
universities, monks, priests and popes were rungs in the ladder of his
mind, and only noticed to scar and satirize their hypocrisy, bigotry and
tyranny with his javelins of matchless wit. The flower and fruit of
thought sprang spontaneously from his seraphic soul.
He flung his phrases into the intellectual ocean of thought, and they
still shine and shower down the ages like meteors in a midnight sky.
Like the busy bee, he banqueted on all the blossoms of the globe and
stored the honey of his genius in the lofty crags of Parnassus.
Shakspere and Nature were confidential friends, and, while she gave a
few sheaves of knowledge to her other children, the old Dame
bestowed upon the "Divine" William the harvest of all the ages.

Shakspere's equipoise of mind, placidity of conduct and control of
passion rendered him invulnerable to the shafts of envy, malice and
tyranny, making him always master of the human midgets or vultures
that circled about his pathway.
One touch from the brush of his imagination on the rudest dramatic
canvas illuminated the murky scene and flashed on the eye of the
beholder the rainbow colors of his matchless genius.
Ben Jonson, Greene, Marlowe, Fletcher and Burbage gazed with
astonishment at the versatility of his poetic and dramatic creations, and
while pangs of jealousy shot athwart their envious souls, they knew that
the Divine Bard was soaring above the alpine crags of thought, leaving
them at the foothills of dramatic venture.
He played the rôle of policy before peasant, lord and king, and used the
applause and brain of each for his personal advancement, and yet he
never sacrificed principle for pelf or bedraggled the skirts of virtue in
the gutter of vice.
The Divine William knew more about everything than any other man
knew about anything! He had a carnivorous and omnivorous mind,
with a judicial soul, and controlled his temper with the same inflexible
rule that Nature uses when murmuring in zephyrs or shrieking in
storms, receding or advancing in dramatic thought, as peace or passion
demanded.
He seemed at times to be a medley of contradictions, and while playing
virtue against vice, the reader and beholder are often left in doubt as to
the guilt or glory of the contending actors. He puts words of wisdom in
the mouth of a fool, and foolish phrases in the mouth of the wise, and
shuttlecocked integrity in the loom of imagination.
William was the only poet who ever had any money sense, and
understood the real value of copper, silver, gold, jewels and land. His
early trials and poverty at Stratford, with the example of his bankrupt
father was always in view, convincing him early in life that ready
money was all-powerful, purchasing rank, comfort and even so-called

love.
Yet he only valued riches as a means of doing good, puncturing the
bladder of bloated wealth with this pin of thought:
"If thou art rich, thou art poor; For, like an ass whose back with ingots
bows, Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, And Death unloads
thee!"
He noticed wherever he traveled that successful stupidity, although
secretly despised, was often the master of the people, while a genius
with the wisdom of the ages, starved at the castle gate, and like Mozart
and Otway, found rest in the Potter's field.
No Indian juggler could mystify the ear and eye and mind of an
audience like Shakspere, for, over the crude thoughts of other dramatic
writers he threw the glamour of his divine imagination, making the
shrubs, vines and briers of life bloom into perpetual flowers of pleasure
and beauty.
With his mystic wand he mesmerized all, And peasants transformed to
kings; While age after age in cottage and hall, He soars with imperial
wings.
No one mind ever comprehended Shakspere, and even all the authors
and readers that sauntered over his wonderful garden of literary flowers
and fruits have but barely clipped at the hedge-rows of his philosophy,
culling a few fragmentary mementos from