1 44 Shakspeare 



If springing things be any jot diminished 



They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth. 



Think again on his possible fate if he had been 

 born in the present age of rank literary profusion, 

 and so had run the risk of mental devastation by 

 its deluge of books, magazines and newspapers- 

 There may be more than one reason why genius 

 is often bred of parents in humble life ; not the 

 freshness and vigour of an unexhausted stock 

 only, but the freedom granted to its full expan- 

 sion by the absence of rules which, being con- 

 straints, are sometimes restraints of growth. How 

 many hapless buds of genius may not exhibitions 

 and scholarships have rudely blighted, or forced 

 pitifully from their fruitful bent to blossom bar- 

 renly into College Dons ? Is it, when all is said, 

 the worthiest aim and happiest achievement of 

 human art to transform a Board School boy into 

 a Senior Wrangler who may thenceforth spend 

 his life in the emendation of a Greek text, pleas- 

 ing and useful as such-like work may be to him 

 if it be his assiduous joy ? 



Certainly it was a blessed hap to Shakspeare, 

 would have been a pitiful mishap had it chanced 

 otherwise, that his intellectual nourishment was 

 limited to the study of a few great writers whom 

 he read diligently and inwardly digested ; his 

 native genius could have had no mental foodstuff 

 better suited to nourish and invigorate its splendid 

 growth or been afforded a freer scope of develop- 

 ment. Thereby in the event he happily preserved 



