1 2 2 Shakspeare 



been cast on the exactly suitable conditions of his 

 best development, doubtless has done in his native 

 town. Singularly fortunate, if we think on it, was 

 the fateful conspiracy of circumstances by which 

 he was made what he was : first, the happy co- 

 operation of compositions and impressions in the 

 germinal production of him, and afterwards the 

 several succeeding conditions of his development 

 through life, propitious in the result even when 

 they seemed accidents, misfortunes, errors at the 

 time. By such blessed coincidence of gifts of 

 nature and fate of fortune, not by merit of his 

 own, it is that the great genius is evolved, how- 

 ever described — whether as the man of destiny, 

 the illumined seer, the inspired prophet, the 

 incarnate spirit of the age, the co-worker with 

 nature in its process of human evolution. 



It may be said, of course, that his dramatic 

 presentations were only abstract creations of his 

 great imaginative faculty ; but their difference 

 from such mere inventions was that they were 

 vital products, not artificial constructions, deriving 

 their life and substance from actual experience of 

 men and things, the organic flowering of a most 

 rich and rare imagination full nourished by 

 realities and ruled by a large and well-instructed 

 understanding. Having observed much, noted 

 what he saw, and drawn large reflective profit 

 from every observation — found " sermons in 

 stones and books in the running brooks" — and 

 apparently so well stored that which he had once 



