60 ' SYLVAN SECBETS. 



the whole of life depended upon the absolute 

 accuracy to be attained in microscopic analy- 

 sis. His characters are just as distinctly in- 

 dividual and just as mysterious as real flesh 

 and blood men and women. He, himself, too 

 is intensely human, weak and strong, silly 

 and wise, careful and careless, neat and slip- 

 shod, clean and dirty, but he is never mean 

 or vicious. We may find a good deal in 

 Chaucer which is so obscene that we doubt 

 that old poet's moral grain and fibre, but 

 Shakespeare does not revel in the filth he 

 sometimes handles. There is a severity, an 

 immovable manner, a steadfastness of coun- 

 tenance, so to say, attending him in his deal- 

 ings with the unclean, as if he felt no touch of 

 any sentiment whatever in the matter. 



Your modern artist, if he dared speak his 

 feeling, would say that Shakespeare was not 

 an artist. Well, he was not; he was some- 

 thing better; he was a genius whose power 

 needed none of the factitious aids character- 

 istic of modern literary and graphic art. He 

 had a superb imagination and an infinitely 

 flexible style of expression without any tech- 

 nical expertness or smartness whatever. 

 Prettiness and exquisite finish of surface he 

 never thought of. Even his sonnets have 

 something of the swing and freedom of a 

 young god's movement. I confess that I do 

 not have any idea of what they mean, but 1 

 feel their value as I feel the value of the sky 

 and the clouds— they are fire and smoke— pas- 

 sion and dimness. If we compare Shakes- 

 peare with some great writer of the present 

 day, Victor Hugo, say, the first strong line 

 of contrast is the self-consciousness of the lat- 

 ter. We cannot ignore Hugo's or Goethe's ob- 

 vious attitudinizing in front of their subjects.^ 



