Lectures on Poetry; Delivered at Oxford (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Lecture VII. SHAKSPERE. ' LEAR.' ' OTHELLO.' An Englishman, criticising Shakspere, is not unlikely to bring a hornet's nest about his ears. Our national poet is known, more or less, by every one, and yet those who can speak of him with full authority, so as to command assent, are still to seek. In Dr. Johnson's instructive but not very lively story, familiar to men, by name at least, as ' Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia,' the sage Imlac, a learned but, as you will remember, not an amusing person, enumerates the qualifications without which no one can claim to be a poet. It takes so much time to reckon them all up, that the royal pupil, accustomed to his own way in the Happy Valley, and as impatient of des longueurs as the most vivacious Parisian extant, cuts him short with this natural interruption? ' Enough, you have convinced me that it is impossible for any man to be a poet.' This, however, does not suit Imlac's purpose, who begins again at once without mercy. 'To be a poet is indeed difficult, but not impossible.' Imlac's object is, unless my memory fails me, to insinuate that he himself might have been great in verse, if he had not preferred being greater still in philosophy; but I forget how the homily ends, nor is it of much importance. Taking the Abyssinian professor, however, as ourexample, we may acknowledge that to be a complete, exhaustive, and infallible critic on Shakspere is nearly as difficult as to stand forth an accredited poet after the order of Imlac. Of our great dramatist we may say, as I believe one of the Fathers said of the Bible: ' There are to be found here bright shallows along which a lamb may wade, and dark places deep enough to drown an elephant.' And, indeed, many illustrious elephants, German as well as English, whether drowned or not...