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I do not mean that we must try to develop Shakespeares, Shelleys, Thackerays; such airy creatures have a way of catering for themselves! I do riot at all want to turn out a generation of third-rate writing amateurs.
For we know that the drama, thereafter, has never had a more than galvanised life, except in the imagination of the gentlemen who discover Shakespeares and Molières as aforesaid. And there are those who say that, not only at the moment, but for some time past, the state of the novel is, and has been, not much more promising.
In France there was no great classic before the age of Louis XIV.; the Dantes and Shakespeares, the early authorities to whom, in times of emancipation, men sooner or later return, were wanting. There were mere sketches of great poets, like Mathurin Regnier, like Rabelais, without any ideal, without the depth of emotion and the seriousness which canonises.
The catalogue shows that there was a copy of the first book printed in England by Caxton, and several priceless Shakespeares, as well as many other volumes that a collector would give a small fortune for. All these are gone. I think when I show this to be the case, the authorities cannot refuse me the right to sell something, and, if I get this permission, I shall at once call upon you.
Nevertheless, human expression being what it is, the greatest or shall we say the most satisfying literary artists, the Shakespeares and Heines, are those who have known subconsciously to fit or trim the deeper intuition to the provincial accents of their daily speech. In them there is no effect of strain.
Carlyle somewhere contrasts his age with that of Elizabeth, after this fashion; "For Raleighs and Shakespeares we have Beau Brummell and Sheridan Knowles." Only on the surmise that Mr. Carlyle owed poor Knowles some desperate grudge, can such an outburst be accounted for. Otherwise it is sheer fatuity, or an impotent explosion of literary spite.
Does it mean that Garricks are rarer than Tuppers? a sad thought: or that Siddonses are rarer than Shakespeares? which may be denied confidently. Does it mean anything? Perhaps not. It merely exhibits a confusion between the relative and the absolute. This warping jealousy if it exist really is due to a feeling that the actor becomes great in popularity at the expense of the author.
"These youngsters are all the same," he complained querulously. "They will put flowers into their reports. It is always a beast of a job to make 'em understand that we want a fact plain and prompt. They can do it all right in the witness-box, but when they get a pen in their hand they fancy they're budding Shakespeares. The old hands know better."
And if they are by way of being comic writers the word "humorist," as Schopenhauer long since pointed out, is a stolen lion's skin for these gentry they will become extremely facetious about the proposed school for Bacons and Shakespeares.
Of a kin with these false influences are all the Miltons who cannot scan, and Shelleys who cannot rhyme, and Shakespeares who cannot think, and all the other absurd impersonations which make our cause ridiculous.
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