English political works have little interest for us. The economic treatises are less stinted in their scope: their calculations on the wealth of nations, the employment of capital, the balance of trade, are applicable in part to the different European societies. Burke[262] emerged from the national political individuality: by declaring himself opposed to the French Revolution, he dragged his country into the long road of hostilities which ended in the plains of Waterloo. However, great figures remained. One met with Milton and Shakespeare on every hand. Did Montmorency[263], Byron[264], Sully[265], by turns French Ambassadors to the Courts of Elizabeth[266] and James I.[267], ever hear speak of a merry-andrew who acted in his own and other writers' farces? Did they ever pronounce the name, so outlandish in French, of Shakespeare? Did they suspect that there was here a glory before which their honours, pomps and ranks would become as nothing? Well, the comedian who undertook the part of the Ghost in _Hamlet_ was the great spectre, the shade of the Middle Ages which rose over the world like the evening star, at the moment when the Middle Ages were at last descending among the dead: giant centuries which Dante[268] opened and Shakespeare closed. In the Memorials of Whitelock[269], the contemporary of the singer of Paradise Lost, we read of "one Mr. Milton, a blind man, parliamentary secretary for Latin despatches." Molière[270], the "stage-player," performed his Pourceaugnac in the same way that Shakespeare, the "buffoon," clowned his Falstaff. Those veiled travellers, who come from time to time to sit at our board, are treated by us as ordinary guests; we remain unaware of their nature until the day of their disappearance. On leaving the earth, they become transfigured, and say to us, as the angel from heaven said to Tobias: "I am one of the seven who stand before the Lord[271]." But, though misunderstood by men on their passage, those divinities do not fail to recognise one another. Milton asks: What needs my Shakespeare, for his honour'd bones, The labour of an age in piled stones[272]? Michael Angelo[273], envying Dante's lot and genius, exclaims: Pur fuss'io tal... Per l'aspro esilio suo con sua virtute Darci del mondo più felice stato. Tasso celebrates Camoëns, as yet almost unknown, and acts as his "Fame." Is there anything more admirable than the society of illustrious people revealing themselves, one to the other, by means of signs, greeting one another and communing with each other in a language understood by themselves alone? [Sidenote: Shakespeare.] Was Shakespeare lame, like Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott[274], and the Prayers, the daughters of Jupiter? If he was so in fact, the "Boy" of Stratford, far from being ashamed of his infirmity, as was Childe Harold, is not afraid to remind one of his mistresses of it: So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite[275].