Still there are pretty grave and anxious drawbacks, jeopardies, fears.
Let us give some reflections on the subject, a little fluctuating, but
starting from one central thought, and returning there again. Two or
three curious results may plow up. As in the astronomical laws, the
very power that would seem most deadly and destructive turns out to be
latently conservative of longest, vastest future births and lives. We
will for once briefly examine the just-named authors solely from a
Western point of view. It may be, indeed, that we shall use the sun
of English literature, and the brightest current stars of his system,
mainly as pegs to hang some cogitations on, for home inspection.
As depicter and dramatist of the passions at their stormiest
outstretch, though ranking high, Shakspere (spanning the arch wide
enough) is equaled by several, and excelled by the best old Greeks,
(as Eschylus.) But in portraying mediaeval European lords and barons,
the arrogant port, so dear to the inmost human heart, (pride! pride!
dearest, perhaps, of all--touching us, too, of the States closest of
all--closer than love,) he stands alone, and I do not wonder he so
witches the world.
From first to last, also, Walter Scott and Tennyson, like Shakspere,
exhale that principle of caste which we Americans have come on earth
to destroy. Jefferson's verdict on the Waverley novels was that they
turned and condensed brilliant but entirely false lights and glamours
over the lords, ladies, and aristocratic institutes of Europe,
with all their measureless infamies, and then left the bulk of the
suffering, down-trodden people contemptuously in the shade.
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