Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/182

 they walked; those are not the highest poets or soldiers or statesmen whom it is possible or permissible to imagine as winning equal fame in some other field than their own, by the application to some other end of such energy and genius as made them great in the line which they were impelled to select at least as much by pressure of accident as by force of instinct, by the external necessity of chance as by the internal necessity of nature. Accident and occasion may be strongest with men of the second order; but with minds of the first rank that which we call the impulse of nature is yet more strong than they. I doubt not that Jonson might in another age have sought and won distinction from the active life of soldiership or of statecraft; I take leave to doubt whether Shakespeare, had he sought it, would have won. I am not disinclined to admit the supposition that Chapman might have applied his power of moral thought and his interest in historic action to other ends than they ever served in literature or in life, But neither for his sake nor for ours am I disposed to regret that circumstance or destiny should have impelled or