He was master of the revels to mankind. Is it not as
if one should have, through majestic powers of science, the comets
given into his hand, or the planets and their moons, and should draw
them from their orbits to glare with the municipal fireworks on a
holiday night, and advertise in all towns, "very superior pyrotechny
this evening!" Are the agents of nature, and the power to understand
them, worth no more than a street serenade, or the breath of a cigar?
One remembers again the trumpet-text in the Koran--"The heavens and
the earth, and all that is between them, think ye we have created them
in jest?" As long as the question is of talent and mental power, the
world of men has not his equal to show. But when the question is to
life, and its materials, and its auxiliaries, how does he profit me?
What does it signify? It is but a Twelfth Night, or Midsummer-Night's
Dream, or a Winter Evening's Tale: what signifies another picture more
or less? The Egyptian verdict of the Shakspeare Societies comes to
mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact
to his verse. Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping
with their thought; but this man, in wide contrast.
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