gone before him-"the mighty poets in their misery dead." Yes, mighty, but not the mightiest of all. He who towers above every other is memorable by all which we know of him for the equable and harmonious developments of his whole being; for the unpretending simplicity which would not allow him to claim any exemptions, any immunities, on the score of genius. In nothing eccentric, in nothing differing to the common eye from any other burgher of your town, he bought and sold in your streets, portioned his daughters, invested in prudent purchases the fruits of honourable toil; what he had thus fairly earned he was prepared, if occasion required, to defend by such just help as the law afforded, shrank from no humble duty of every-day life, and yet all the while knew himself, for he must so have known it, the dear heir of a memory which the world would never let die. You will be asked before you leave this church to contribute to the restoring and beautifying of its chancel, in which the dust of Shakspere, for it is even so near to us, mingles with the common clay. It will be a fit opportunity of testifying that it is not lip homage only which you render to his name. I will only ask you, as you prepare your offering, to imagine this England of ours without her Shakspere, in which, had he never lived or sung, what a crown would be stricken from her brow! How would she come down from the preeminence of her place as the nursing mother of the foremost poet the world has ever seen-whom, we are almost bold to prophesy, it never will see. Think how much poorer intellectually-yea, and morally— every one of us would be; what would have to be withdrawn from circulation of wisest sayings, of profoundest maxims of his wisdom which have now been absorbed into the very tissue of our hearts and minds; what regions of fancy, peopled now with marvellous shapes, of strength, of grace, of beauty, of dignity, with beings who have far more reality for us than most of those whom we meet in our daily walk, would be empty and depopulated. And remember that this of which we speak would not be our loss alone, or the loss of those who have lived already, but the disappearance as well of all that delight, of all that instruction, which, so long as the world endures, he will diffuse in circles ever larger as the recognition of his single pre-eminence becomes every day more unquestioned, as he moves in ages yet to come through everwidening avenues of fame. But of this enough. "Cease we from man." Let no word be uttered by us here which shall even seem to imply that the praise, and honour, and worship, and homage which a man may receive from his fellows are or can be the best, the crowning glory of life. Good are they, but they are not the best. Few in the nature of things can be those illustrious heirs of memory, dwelling apart from their fellows on the peak of their solitary greatness. The Archbishop, going on to show that goodness was better than greatness after all, said that men attain Heaven, not soaring on the wings of genius, but patiently climbing up the stairs cf faith, and love, and obedience; that the brightest crowns are doomed to wither; that there is but one amaranthine crown-even that which Christ gives to them, be they high or low, wise or simple, emperors or clowns-who have loved, and served, and obeyed Him. For myself (he continued) I am strong in my belief that from one so gentle, so just, so true as Shakspere, the grace to make this highest consecration was not withholden -that we have the right to number him with Dante, with Spenser, with Milton, and with all that august company of poets "who sing, and are still singing in their glory." His intimate, in one sense, profound acquaintance with the Scriptures no one can doubt, or the strong grasp which he had on its central truths. He knew the deep corruption of our fallen naturethe desperate wickedness of the heart of man-else he would never have put into the mouth of a prince of stainless life such a confession as this:-"I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me-with more offences at my beck than I have thought to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in." He has set forth the scheme of our redemption in words as lovely as have ever poured from any uninspired pen : "Why, all the souls that were forfeit once, And He that might the vantage best have took He has put to the holiest here their need of an infinite pardon from Him who requires truth in the inward parts : "How would you be, If He who is the top of judgment should He was one who assuredly knew what a stewardship was in these marvellous gifts which had been entrusted to him, for he has himself told us : "Heaven does with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth for us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not." And again he has told us that— "Spirits are not finely touched But for fine issues." He was one who certainly knew that there is none so wise that he can circumvent God; that no man, whether he be called early or late, knoweth which of all his doings shall forward him to the outside of that holy temple of our faith, whereof he has uttered such glorious things, admiring its beauty, but not himself having entry to worship there. One so real, so truthful, as all we learn about Shakspere declares him to have been, fell in with no idle form of words when in the last testament which he dictated shortly before his death, he first of all, and before all, commended his soul to God, his Creator, and thus "hoping”—I quote his exact words" assuredly believing, through the only merit of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting." |