POETRY AND IMAGINATION 



recesses of the microcosm of man. One spirit of discovery 

 and exultant power animated both seamen and poets. 

 Shakespeare and Marlowe were, no less than Drake and 

 Cavendish, circumnavigators of the world. 



The influence of the Voyages upon the great litera- The\methods 

 ture of the time has been little recognised, because the "^ ^^'^* 

 reflection of contemporary events in thought and 

 imagination is always indirect, difficult to outline, and 

 utterly unlike common expectation. When exact his- 

 torians complain of a poet that he does not hold up 

 the mirror to his own time, they are often merely com- 

 plaining that he is not a reporter, a retailer of names 

 and dates, the dupe of notoriety. Shakespeare, it is 

 often said, tells us more of Italy than of England ; yet 

 in Shakespeare's plays only the labels are Italian, while 

 every type of English character, from a king to a tinker, 

 is drawn to the life. Othello is a Tudor gentleman. Shakespeare 

 Petruchio, Bassanio, and a dozen others are adventurous England of 

 Elizabethan gallants. Osric is a courtly gull, Mercutio his time. 

 a courtly wit, Edgar in hear is a noble masquerading 

 as an Abram man, Autolycus is a cony-catcher. All 

 alike are heightened portraits of the men whom Shake- 

 speare had met and talked to at the Court, in the tavern, 

 or by the roadside. It is true that the names of the 

 great men of his own time seldom occur in his plays. 

 A living great man is celebrated chiefly by poetasters ; 

 who, for that matter, were not lacking to celebrate 

 Drake and Frobisher and Howard. A poet commonly 

 prefers to work with human material closer at hand, 

 easier to come at, not hedged around by popular 

 favour or on its guard against intimate research. He 

 will select at his own liking from the life around him, 



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