Emerson, too, says of Shakespeare, that all his
poetry was first experience.
When we seek to analyze what we mean by the term Shakespeare, to
endeavor to define wherein he was distinct from all others and easily
pre-eminent, to know why to us he ever grows wiser as we grow wise, we
find that his especial characteristic was an unequalled power of
observation and an ability accurately to chronicle his impressions. He
was the only man ever born who lived and wrote absolutely without bias
or prejudice. Emerson says of him that "he reported all things with
impartiality; that he tells the great greatly, the small
subordinately,--he is strong as Nature is strong, who lifts the land
into mountain slopes without effort, and by the same rule as she floats
a bubble in the air, and likes as well to do the one as the other." Says
he, further: "Give a man of talents a story to tell, and his partiality
will presently appear: he has certain opinions which he disposes other
things to bring into prominence; he crams this part and starves the
other part, consulting not the fitness of the thing but his fitness and
strength." But Shakespeare has no peculiarity; all is duly given.
Thus it is that his dramas are the book of human life. He was an
accurate observer of Nature: he notes the markings of the violet and the
daisy; the haunts of the honeysuckle, the mistletoe, and the woodbine.
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