_Cade._ Ay, there’s the question; but, I say,’tis true: The elder of them, being put to nurse, Was by a beggar-woman stol’n away: And, ignorant of his birth and parentage, Became a bricklayer, when he came to age; His son am I; deny it, if you can. _Dick._ Nay, ’tis too true; therefore he shall be king. _Smith._ Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore, deny it not.’ Shakespeare was too wise not to know that for most of the purposes of human life stupidity is a most valuable element. He had nothing of the impatience which sharp logical narrow minds habitually feel when they come across those who do not apprehend their quick and precise deductions. No doubt he talked to the stupid players, to the stupid door-keeper, to the property man, who considers paste jewels ‘very preferable, besides the expense’—talked with the stupid apprentices of stupid Fleet Street, and had much pleasure in ascertaining what was their notion of ‘King Lear.’ In his comprehensive mind it was enough if every man hitched well into his own place in human life. If every one were logical and literary, how would there be scavengers, or watchmen, or caulkers, or coopers? Narrow minds will be subdued to what they ‘work in.’ The ‘dyer’s hand’ will not more clearly carry off its tint, nor will what is moulded more precisely indicate the confines of the mould. A patient sympathy, a kindly fellow-feeling for the narrow intelligence necessarily induced by narrow circumstances,—a narrowness which, in some degrees, seems to be inevitable, and is perhaps more serviceable than most things to the wise conduct of life—this, though quick and half-bred minds may despise it, seems to be a necessary constituent in the composition of manifold genius. ‘How shall the world be served?’ asks the host in Chaucer. We must have cart-horses as well as race-horses, draymen as well as poets. It is no bad thing, after all, to be a slow man and to have one idea a year. You don’t make a figure, perhaps, in argumentative society, which requires a quicker species of thought, but is that the worse? ‘_Hol._ _Via_, Goodman Dull; thou hast spoken no word all this while. _Dull._ Nor understood none neither, sir. _Hol._ _Allons_, we will employ thee. _Dull._ I’ll make one in a dance or so, or I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay. _Hol._ Most dull, honest Dull, to our sport away.’ And such, we believe, was the notion of Shakespeare.