Shakspere-His Mind and Art. CHAPTER I. SHAKSPERE AND THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. Dr IN these chapters an attempt will be made to present a view or aspect of a great poet, and the first word must explain precisely what such a view or aspect is worth, what it professes to be, and what it disclaims. Newman, in his "Grammar of Assent," has distinguished two modes of apprehending propositions. There is what he calls the real apprehension of a proposition, and there is the notional apprehension. In real apprehension there is the perception of some actual, concrete, individual object, either with the eye or some bodily sense, or with the mind's eye-memory, or imagination. our minds are not so constructed as to be able to receive and retain only an exact image of each of the objects that comes before us one by one, in and for itself. On the contrary, we compare and contrast. We see at once "that man is like man, yet unlike; and unlike a horse, a tree, a mountain, or a monument. And in consequence we are ever grouping and discriminating, A But measuring and sounding, framing cross classes, and cross divisions, and thereby rising from particulars to generals, that is, from images to notions. 'Man' is no longer what he really is, an individual presented to us by our senses, but as we read him in the light of those comparisons and contrasts which we have made him suggest to us. He is attenuated into an aspect, or relegated to his place in a classification. Thus his appellation is made to suggest, not the real being which he is in this or that specimen of himself, but a definition." Thus individual propositions about the concrete, in the mind of a thinker whose intellect works in the way of notional apprehension, "almost cease to be, and are diluted or starved into abstract notions. The events of history and the characters who figure in it lose their individuality." Now it is not such an aspect, such a view of Shakspere which it is here attempted to present. To come into close and living relation with the individuality of a poet must be the chief end of our study-to receive from his nature the peculiar impulse and impression. which he, best of all, can give. We must not attenuate Shakspere to an aspect, or reduce him to a definition, or deprive him of individuality, or make of him a mere notion. Yet also no experiment will here be made to bring Shakspere before the reader as he spoke, and walked, as he jested in his tavern, or meditated in his solitude. It is a real apprehension of Shakspere's character and genius which is desired, but not such an apprehension as mere observation of the externals of the man, of his life or of his poetry, would be likely to produce. I wish rather to attain to some central principles of life in him which animate and control the rest, for such there are existent in every man whose life is life in any true sense of the word, and not a mere affair of chance, of impulse, of moods, and of accidents. In such a study as this we endeavour to pass through the creation of the artist to the mind of the creator: but it by no means prevents our returning to view the work of art simply as such, apart from the artist, and as such to receive delight from it. Nay, in the end it augments our delight by enabling us to discover a mass of fact which would otherwise be overlooked. To enjoy the beauty of a landscape it is not necessary to understand the nature and arrangement of the rocks which underlie or rise up from the soil. While studying the stratification of those rocks we absolutely lose sight of the beauty of the landscape. Nevertheless, a larger mass of pleasure is in the end possessed by one who adds to his instinctive spontaneous feeling of delight, a knowledge of the geology of the country. In like manner, while the study of anatomy is quite distinct from the pleasure which the sight of a beautiful human body gives, yet, in the end, the sculptor who adds to his instinctive, spontaneous delight in the beauty of moulded form and moving limb, a knowledge of human anatomy, receives a mass of pleasure greater than that of one who is unacquainted with the facts of structure and function. There is an obvious cause of this. The geologist and the anatomist see more, and see a new class of phenomena, which produce new delights. The lines of force in a landscape, to which an ordinary observer is entirely insensible, come out to the |