Page:Shakespeare in the Class-Room, Weld, Shakespeariana, October 1886.djvu/11

Rh of these sciences of nature, lives vast nature herself, all aglow, above, beneath, around and within us,—its great heart beat stirring our pulses too, thrilling us with its vitalities till we grow plastic in their warmth, absorb their forces, and thus dilate into a larger development, and rise into higher life. This Nature illumines every page of Shakespeare, her representative, pupil and child, speaking in her own vernacular, trained by herself and commissioned by her to train others. Let Shakespeare have conferred upon him the freedom of her schools and right royally will he execute his high commission.

The last consideration that I urge, is that Shakespeare's works are in themselves an epitome and a summary of universal literature wrought out in endless forms of philosophic structure, and æsthetic texture, in felicities of thought and style, regrouping and refining the shapeliest features of other writers. What characteristic of universal literature is not sublimated in Shakespeare?

Intuition, invention, acuteness, grasp, philosophic depth, subtile wit, and humor, the loftiest creations with the lowliest simplicities, all varieties of verse in faultless rythm, of prose in tersest form and fittest words, highest utilities of practical wisdom, with profoundest moral inculcations, adorned with all felicities of diction, welling ever from unsounded depths,—in a word, beauties and sublimities in endless novelties of form, lavished with unconscious prodigality, and yet adjusted with a marvellous nicety of taste and skill, spring spontaneous in his pages.

Our text books in English literature contain biographical sketches of hundreds of authors with brief extracts from their works. Such books furnish details not easily accessible elsewhere. They are convenient collections of literary statistics, relieved by quotations characteristic of the writers. But what means do such fragmentary scraps afford for the literary education of pupils, enabling them to discrimate and combine the elements of literature, grasp its scope, master its analysis and form a critical taste that shall be its touchstone, separating its gold from all alloy? Such scrap-books do, in this respect, mock the pupils' real need. Apart from the biographical notices, they constitute a sort of literary confection made up of all sorts of ingredients, and often like other confections, neither easy of digestion, nor convertible into aliment. Such collections afford no adequate means for literary training. When the pupils in our advanced classes are, under a wise supervision, put to the study and critical analysis of Shakespeare, there will then be taught in our schools, not only an English literature, but all that is fundamental in Universal Literature, not its mere outline, but its essential self, with whatever is vital in æsthetic philosophic detail.

And now to sum up in a word, let me say that, regarding Shakespeare, as without a peer not only as a poet, but as a thinker, a philosopher, a moralist, a metaphysician, a logician,—though without the