Superb and inimitable as all is, it is mostly an objective and physiological kind of power and beauty the soul finds in Shakespeare—a style supremely grand of the sort, but in my opinion stopping short of the grandest sort, at any rate for fulfilling and satisfying modern and scientific and democratic American purposes. Think, not of growths as forests primeval, or Yellowstone geysers, or Colorado ravines, but of costly marble palaces, and palace rooms, and the noblest fixings and furniture, and noble owners and occupants to correspond—think of carefully built gardens from the beautiful but sophisticated gardening art at its best, with walks and bowers and artificial lakes, and appropriate statue groups, and the finest cultivated roses and lilies and japonicas in plenty—and you have the tally of Shakespeare. The low characters, mechanics, even the loyal henchmen—all in themselves nothing—serve as capital foils to the aristocracy. The comedies (exquisite as they certainly are), bringing in admirably portrayed common characters, have the unmistakable hue of plays, portraits, made for the divertisement only of the élite of the castle, and from its point of view. The comedies are altogether non-acceptable to America and Democracy. But to the deepest soul, it seems a shame to pick and choose from the riches Shakespeare has left us—to criticise his infinitely royal, multiform quality—to gauge, with optic glasses, the dazzle of his sun-like beams. From _Poet-Lore_, July 1890. _Complete Prose Works._ Boston, Mass., 1898, p. 394. Walt Whitman, when he says that “the comedies are altogether non-acceptable to America and Democracy,” states rather what he considers ought to be, than what actually is. In his essay, “Poetry To-day in America,” he says of Shakespeare, “In portraying mediæval European lords and barons, the arrogant poet, so dear to the inmost human heart (pride! pride! dearest, perhaps, of all—touching us, too, of the States closest of all—closer than love), he stands alone, and I do not wonder he so witches the world.”—_Prose Works_, Boston, 1898, p. 283. RICHARD WATSON GILDER, 1891 (_b._ 1844) “_The Twenty-Third of April._” A little English earth and breathèd air Made Shakespeare the divine; so is his verse The broidered soil of every blossom fair; So doth his song all sweet bird-songs rehearse. But tell me, then, what wondrous stuff did fashion That part of him which took those wilding flights Among imagined worlds; whence the white passion That burned three centuries through the days and nights! Not heaven’s four winds could make, nor round the earth, The soul wherefrom the soul of Hamlet flamed; Nor anything of merely mortal birth Could lighten as when Shakespeare’s name is named. How was his body bred we know full well, But that high soul’s engendering who may tell!