Nor was Shakespeare himself
unconscious of his place as a teacher and profound moralist: witness
that sonnet in which he bewails his having neglected sometimes the
errand that was laid upon him:
Alas, 't is true I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new;
Most true it is that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely;
the application of which is made clear by the next sonnet, in which he
distinctly alludes to his profession.
There is this unmistakable stamp on all the great poets--that, however
in little things they may fall below themselves, whenever there comes a
great and noble thing to say, they say it greatly and nobly, and bear
themselves most easily in the royalties of thought and language. There
is not a mature play of Shakespeare's in which great ideas do not jut up
in mountainous permanence, marking forever the boundary of provinces of
thought, and known afar to many kindreds of men.
And it is for this kind of sight, which we call insight, and not for any
faculty of observation and description, that we value the poet. It is in
proportion as he has this that he is an adequate expresser, and not a
juggler with words. It is by means of this that for every generation of
man he plays the part of "namer.
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