A counsellor well fitted to advise In daily life, and at whose lips no less Men may inquire or nations, when distress Of sudden doubtful danger may arise, Who, though his head be hidden in the skies, Plants his firm foot upon our common earth, Dealing with thoughts which everywhere have birth,— This is the poet, true of heart and wise: No dweller in a baseless world of dream, Which is not earth nor heaven: his words have passed Into man’s common thought and week-day phrase; This is the poet and his verse will last. Such was our Shakespeare once, and such doth seem One who redeems our later gloomier days. _Poems collected and arranged anew._ 1865, p. 83. FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE, 1865 (1824-1897) Only three or four generations of fairly long-lived men lie between us and Shakespeare; literature in his own time had reached a high development; his grandeur and sweetness were freely recognised; within seventy years of his death his biography was attempted; yet we know little more of Shakespeare himself than we do of Homer. Like several of the greatest men,—Lucretius, Virgil, Tacitus, Dante,—a mystery never to be dispelled hangs over his life. He has entered into the cloud. With a natural and an honourable diligence, other men have given their lives to the investigation of his, and many external circumstances, mostly of a minor order, have been thus collected: yet of “the man Shakespeare,” in Mr. Hallam’s words, we know nothing. Something which seems more than human in immensity of range and calmness of insight moves before us in the Plays; but, from the nature of dramatic writing, the author’s personality is inevitably veiled; no letter, no saying of his, or description by an intimate friend, has been preserved: and even when we turn to the _Sonnets_, though each is an autobiographical confession, we find ourselves equally foiled. These revelations of the poet’s innermost nature appear to teach us less of the man than the tone of mind which we trace, or seem to trace, in _Measure for Measure_, _Hamlet_, and the _Tempest_: the strange imagery of passion which passes over the magic mirror has no tangible existence before or behind it:—the great artist, like Nature herself, is still latent in his works; diffused through his own creation. . . . . . . Yet there is, after all, nothing more remarkable or fascinating in English poetry than these personal revelations of the mind of our greatest poet. We read them again and again, and find each time some new proof of his almost superhuman insight into human nature; of his unrivalled mastery over all the tones of love. _Songs and Sonnets of William Shakespeare._ Edited by Francis Turner Palgrave. 1865, pp. 238-9 and 243. FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE, 1866 (1809-1893) “_To Shakespeare._”