His Life and Genius 123 



seen and thought, either in the table of his 

 memory or in written tablets, as never to lose 

 good use of it, he was able to embody the 

 quintessence of rural nature, animate and in- 

 animate, and the traditions and beliefs of the 

 countryside in forms of exquisite art. Therein he 

 pursued instinctively the method which is just 

 the method, conscious or unconscious, of organic 

 progress in all mental growth — namely, the fit 

 incorporation and transformation of nature through 

 living union with it. As the scientific enquirer 

 does advisedly and methodically, so he observed 

 naturally, meditating and making inductions or 

 inferences, which he did not then leave as mere 

 untried theories, " thoughts unacted," but unfolded 

 and tested by deductive application to particulars ; 

 knowing well, as he says, that 



Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. 



Assimilating all nature directly and freshly, not 

 stalely and conventionally at second hand, he 

 carried forward its organic development through 

 himself ; which is just' what every great leader of 

 thought or action does in his sphere of work, but 

 visionary theorists often barrenly fail to do. 



If one thing is certain it is that Shakspeare 

 was sanely human and sagely practical in every 

 quality of him, virile in character as in verse, 

 nowise a tense-strung neurotic, nor overstrained 

 idealist, nor mere barren melody-monger, and that 

 his work in life and art was the sincere, full, free 



