Wonderful as his imagination and
fancy are, his perspicacity and artistic discretion are more so. This
country tradesman's son, coming up to London, could set high-bred wits,
like Beaumont, uncopiable lessons in drawing gentlemen such as are seen
nowhere else but on the canvas of Titian; he could take Ulysses away from
Homer and expand the shrewd and crafty islander into a statesman whose
words are the pith of history. But what makes him yet more exceptional
was his utterly unimpeachable judgment, and that poise of character which
enabled him to be at once the greatest of poets and so unnoticeable a
good citizen as to leave no incidents for biography. His material was
never far-sought; (it is still disputed whether the fullest head of which
we have record were cultivated beyond the range of grammar-school
precedent!) but he used it with a poetic instinct which we cannot
parallel, identified himself with it, yet remained always its born and
questionless master. He finds the Clown and Fool upon the stage,--he
makes them the tools of his pleasantry, his satire, and even his pathos;
he finds a fading rustic superstition, and shapes out of it ideal Pucks,
Titanias, and Ariels, in whose existence statesmen and scholars believe
forever.
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