THE BOTANY OF SHAKESPEARE 



The universality of Shakespeare is the common re- 

 mark of critics. Other great men have been versatile; 

 Shakespeare alone is universal. He alone of all great 

 men seems to have been able to follow his own advice, 

 1 'to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature." On the 

 clear surface of his thought, as on a deep glacial lake, 

 the whole shore lies reflected not alone the clouds, the 

 sky, the woods, the rocks, the mountain path by which 

 the shepherd strolls, not alone the broad highway by 

 which may march the king in splendor, the peasant with 

 his wain, but even the humbler objects by the still 

 water's edge, the trodden grass, the fluttering sedge, the 

 broken reed, the tiniest flower, all things, all nature in 

 action or repose finds counterpart within the glassy 

 depths. 



Hence it is that no man, at least no English-speaking 

 man, reads Shakespeare wrong. Everybody understands 

 him. Here is a sort of Anglo-Saxon bible in which, so 

 far as the world goes, every soul finds himself, with all 

 his hopes, his doubts, his whims, depicted. "We are 

 therefore not surprised that everybody claims a share 

 in Shakespeare; rather claims the poet as his own. The 

 Protestant is sure that Shakespeare despised the hier- 

 archy ; the Catholic is quite as certain that he loved the 

 Church. There exists an essay to prove him a Presby- 

 terian; another to show that the great dramatist was a 



