If not, how explain the
charm with which he dominates in all tongues, even under the
disenchantment of translation? Among the most alien races he is as
solidly at home as a mountain seen from different sides by many lands,
itself superbly solitary, yet the companion of all thoughts and
domesticated in all imaginations.
In description Shakespeare is especially great, and in that instinct
which gives the peculiar quality of any object of contemplation in a
single happy word that colors the impression on the sense with the mood
of the mind. Most descriptive poets seem to think that a hogshead of
water caught at the spout will give us a livelier notion of a
thunder-shower than the sullen muttering of the first big drops upon the
roof. They forget that it is by suggestion, not cumulation, that profound
impressions are made upon the imagination. Milton's parsimony (so rare in
him) makes the success of his
"Sky lowered, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completion of the mortal sin."
Shakespeare understood perfectly the charm of indirectness, of making his
readers seem to discover for themselves what he means to show them. If he
wishes to tell that the leaves of the willow are gray on the under side,
he does not make it a mere fact of observation by bluntly saying so, but
makes it picturesquely reveal itself to us as it might in Nature:--
"There is a willow grows athwart the flood,
That shows his _hoar_ leaves in the glassy stream.
Pages:
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270