Theodore Watts, as he told me twenty years ago, holds the opinion that Shakespeare wrote private poetry in a separate book while composing his dramas, and that he gave such portions of it as he could make fit, to certain of his characters. He thought, if I remember aright, that the soliloquy and the dagger-scene were morsels of this sort. It certainly must strike one that “the law’s delay” and “the insolence of office” were not prominent grievances in Hamlet’s career.

When I was about eleven years old I became owner of Rowe’s “Shakespeare,” which has in it a wonderful little life of the bard. He quotes the marvellous passage beginning with—

and, as far as memory serves me, it was to declare that poetry of such exquisite beauty was not to be found in any other writer, ancient or modern. I have since often thought that nothing in the context fairly led up to an idea of such magnitude, and that the passage was one of Shakespeare’s interpolations. Be this as it may, it had an elevating effect on me which has lasted me for life; it gave me a sense of perfect excellence. It may appear ridiculous to say that it not only made me envious of the greatest of writers, but that it depressed me, in turn, with the feeling that I could never equal it, however long I might live!

No other writer at that time affected me similarly, except Virgil, when I came to that passage which depicts the breaking of the waves on the prow of the vessel and the receding of the cities and lands (terrÆque urbesque recedunt). After we reached our beds at night the boys were wont to “coze” in literary cliques round some favourite tale-teller, who would relate marvellous stories of knights and ladies, with much about genii, fairies, and witches. Though I never heard anything to that effect, I have always thought that Coleridge must have lent himself to such delights for the pleasure of others, and that “Christabel” was unconsciously an outcome of these romantic entertainments.

Many of the boys were great readers of forbidden story, and smuggled books into the school, the penalty of which, on being found out, was a flogging. The books in question were romances of enchanted castles; of beautiful young women, the prisoners of tyrants; of subterraneous passages and solitary cells. I would give much to possess a circulating library of that day. Such a one I found at Seaford, and devoured whenever my holidays came round. The novel, as reintroduced by Plumer Ward, and imitated greedily by Bulwer and Disraeli, was then unknown.

“Tremaine,” like all new conceptions which are accordant with the average mentality of great Britons, became epidemic, and floated over the reading world as a new sensation. It was succeeded by “De Vere,” while Walter Scott was winding up the business of romance. The success of these works started a fresh “novel” epoch, now, too, worn out, only lingering till such successors as Walter Besant and Louis Stevenson are ready to sweep them from view. This is so true that it is almost a disgrace to write a novel.

It must not, however, be forgotten that Dickens fired a bomb into library shelves, and that Thackeray gave us his own character in novelistic shape.

All great things appear in epochs, which hitherto have had a limited duration. Witness the rise and fall of sculpture in Greece, of epic and drama there; of painting in Italy, beginning with Titian and Raphael as late as the sixteenth century; of music in Germany and Italy, now on the point of extinction. Poetry, too, has had its day from Shakespeare to Coleridge, and is now dead. The present is the epoch of invention, and that will die out.

Music has never been of the highest quality in a free country. The northern nations, England, America, the great Colonies, produce no musical genius; Italy and Germany have ceased to do so since they came into the enjoyment of freedom.

Science itself, now rampant, is but of an epoch. But, amid all this, religion is enduring.

Some will say, We now have the Press; that will maintain and resuscitate all that is good or beautiful! Not so; it is but of an epoch, and is already blasÉ. It does not lead; it only “follows the leader,” as in a game played by a child.

Nothing that has been and has died out, will be revived. The skeleton, an osseous Apollo, will remain, and that is all.

These dry bones cannot live, O son of man!