Page:On Shakespeare, or, What You Will, Furness, 1908.djvu/26

24 of mistaking a microscopic examination of Shakespeare’s text and grammar, or elaborate archaeological burrowings for an enlightened comprehension of him. I am inclined almost to assert that no one not born to the inheritance of Shakespeare’s tongue can understand him. Alien as well as native skilled workmen may construct the winding stairs leading to the turret, but Shakespeare’s countrymen alone can throw wide the magic casement. Earliest and foremost among the interpreters of Shakespeare’s meaning stands Coleridge; then follow a brilliant throng: Hazlitt, Campbell, Christopher North, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Kemble, Hudson, Swinburne, Lowell, Lady Martin,—inexpressibly valuable are her revelations of certain female characters,—and now at the present day, Professor A. C. Bradley, whose interpretations are to be ranked among the most brilliant and most illuminative, almost recalling the palmy days of Coleridge. These are the books, the Academes, from whence doth spring the true Promethean fire. And there are many, many more.

As to a choice of editions, my advice to you is, taking counsel of age and eyesight, to select the clearest and most legible type, and then find encouragement in Charles Lamb’s experience: you remember when he was writing to a friend that he still had his “sight, hearing, taste pretty perfect,” he added that he could “read the Lord’s Prayer in common type, by the help of a candle, without making many mistakes.”

Next, beware of putting Shakespeare too early into the hands of the young. For the purpose of teaching English or Archaeology, use some corpus vilius, some cheaper stuff, some lesser light,—Ben Jonson, for instance, if he were not at times so indelibly coarse. It is a dangerous risk, lest, by regarding Shakespeare as a task, an aversion be created which may even extend to future years. Moreover, is Shakespeare, whom, as Mr. Emerson says, no mind can measure, to be given to raw youth, and are Shakespeare’s revelations of the deepest truths food for babes?

Lastly, let me entreat, and beseech, and adjure, and implore you not to write an essay on Hamlet. In the catalogue of a library which is very dear to me, there are about four hundred titles of separate editions, essays, commentaries, lectures, and criticisms on this sole tragedy, and I know that this is only the vanguard of the coming years. To modify the words, on another subject, of my ever