He cannot step from off his tripod,
and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the antique documents
extricated, analyzed, and compared, by the assiduous Dyce and Collier;
and now read one of those skyey sentences,--aerolites,--which seem to
have fallen out of heaven, and which, not your experience, but the man
within the breast, has accepted as words of fate; and tell me if they
match; if the former account in any manner for the latter; or, which
gives the most historical insight into the man.
Hence, though our external history is so meager, yet, with Shakspeare
for biographer, instead of Aubrey and Rowe, we have really the
information which is material, that which describes character and
fortune; that which, if we were about to meet the man and deal with
him, would most import us to know. We have his recorded convictions
on those questions which knock for answer at every heart,--on life and
death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life, and the
ways whereby we may come at them; on the characters of men, and the
influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes: and on those
mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science, and which yet
interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours.
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