England, sea-girt, veiled in mist and clouds, turning its active interest toward every quarter of the globe, is everywhere. The poet lived at a notable and momentous time, and depicted its culture, its misculture even, in the merriest vein; indeed, he would not affect us so powerfully had he not identified himself with the age in which he lived. No one had a greater contempt for the mere material, outward garb of man than he; he understands full well that which is within, and here all are on the same footing. It is thought that he represented the Romans admirably; I do not find it so; they are all true-blue Englishmen, but, to be sure, they are men, men through and through, and the Roman toga, too, fits them. When we have seized this point of view, we find his anachronisms highly laudable, and it is this very disregard of the outer raiment that renders his creations so vivid. Let these few words, which do not by any means exhaust Shakespeare's merits, suffice. His friends and worshipers would find much that might be added. Yet one remark more It would be difficult to name another poet each of whose works has a different underlying conception exerting such a dominating influence as we find in Shakespeare's. Thus _Coriolanus_ is pervaded throughout by anger that the masses will not acknowledge the preeminence of their superiors. In _Julius Cæsar_ everything turns upon the conception that the better people do not wish any one placed in supreme authority because they imagine, mistakenly, that they can work in unison. _Anthony and Cleopatra,_ calls out with a thousand tongues that self-indulgence and action are incompatible. And further investigation will rouse our admiration of this variety again and again. II SHAKESPEARE COMPARED WITH THE ANCIENT AND THE MOST MODERN POETS The interest that animates Shakespeare's great spirit lies within the limits of the world; for though prophecy and madness, dreams, presentiments, portents, fairies and goblins, ghosts, witches and sorcerers, form a magic element which color his creations at the fitting moment, yet those phantasms are by no means the chief components of his productions; it is the verities and experiences of his life that are the great basis upon which they rest, and that is why everything that proceeds from him appears so genuine and pithy. We perceive, therefore, that he belongs not so much to the modern world, which has been termed the romantic one, as to a naive world, since, though his significance really rests upon the present, he scarcely, even in his tenderest moments, touches the borders of longing, and then only at the outermost edge. Nevertheless, more intimately examined, he is a decidedly modern poet, divided from the ancients by a tremendous gulf, not as regards outward form, which is not to be considered here at all, but as regards the inmost, the profoundest significance of his work.