His Life and Genius 153 



Which eyes yet uncreated shall o'er-read 

 When all the breathers of this world are dead ; 



who boldly declared 



And thou in this shalt find thy monument 



When tyrants' crests and tongues of brass are spent ; 



who was serenely sure that he had written that 

 which would " outlive a gilded tomb," and make 

 the memory of his friend " live in the eyes of all 

 posterity " to the world's ending doom. 



Such tranquil conviction of the value of his 

 verse is a striking comment on the conventional 

 cant of mediocrity that great genius is too modest 

 to know its own greatness ; that as it is not con- 

 scious in the least how it creates, so it is uncon- 

 scious of the superior worth of that which it 

 creates. Strange, indeed, if the superior man 

 had no inward feeling of the power which 

 uplifted him, and, uprisen, was the one person in 

 the world blind to his superiority. As if height 

 of mind were something less positive and manifest 

 than height of body ! 



Xo one, if we may interpret literally, has ever 

 made a bolder claim of everlasting merit for his 

 verse than Shakspeare, and certainly no prophet 

 of his own immortal fame in a mortal world has 

 been better justified by the event. Genius is 

 nowise arrogant when, knowing its value, it does 

 not claim more than its due ; if its distinction is 

 to do something new and true after its special 

 kind which no one else can do so well, or do at 

 all in the same or equal kind, it has as good a 



