Biographical Essays

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DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS.

The "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," and "Suspiria De
Profundis," form the first volume of this series of Mr. De
Quincey's Writings. A third volume will shortly be issued,
containing some of his most interesting papers contributed to the
English magazines.

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY,

Author of "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," Etc. Etc.

SHAKSPEARE.
[Endnote: 1]

William Shakspeare, the protagonist on the great arena of modern
poetry, and the glory of the human intellect, was born at
Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, in the year 1564,
and upon some day, not precisely ascertained, in the month of
April. It is certain that he was baptized on the 25th; and from
that fact, combined with some shadow of a tradition, Malone has
inferred that he was born on the 23d. There is doubtless, on the
one hand, no absolute necessity deducible from law or custom, as
either operated in those times, which obliges us to adopt such a
conclusion; for children might be baptized, and were baptized, at
various distances from their birth: yet, on the other hand, the 23d
is as likely to have been the day as any other; and more likely
than any earlier day, upon two arguments. First, because there was
probably a tradition floating in the seventeenth century, that
Shakspeare died upon his birthday: now it is beyond a doubt that he
died upon the 23d of April.

Secondly, because it is a reasonable presumption, that no parents,
living in a simple community, tenderly alive to the pieties of
household duty, and in an age still clinging reverentially to the
ceremonial ordinances of religion, would much delay the adoption of
their child into the great family of Christ. Considering the
extreme frailty of an infant's life during its two earliest years,
to delay would often be to disinherit the child of its Christian
privileges; privileges not the less eloquent to the feelings from
being profoundly mysterious, and, in the English church, forced not
only upon the attention, but even upon the eye of the most
thoughtless. According to the discipline of the English church, the
unbaptized are buried with "maimed rites," shorn of their
obsequies, and sternly denied that "sweet and solemn farewell," by
which otherwise the church expresses her final charity with all
men; and not only so, but they are even _locally_ separated
and sequestrated. Ground the most hallowed, and populous with
Christian burials of households,

"That died in peace with one another.
Father, sister, son, and brother,"

opens to receive the vilest malefactor; by which the church
symbolically expresses her maternal willingness to gather back into
her fold those even of her flock who have strayed from her by the
most memorable aberrations; and yet, with all this indulgence, she
banishes to unhallowed ground the innocent bodies of the
unbaptized. To them and to suicides she turns a face of wrath. With
this gloomy fact offered to the very external senses, it is
difficult to suppose that any parents would risk their own
reproaches, by putting the fulfilment of so grave a duty on the
hazard of a convulsion fit. The case of royal children is
different; their baptisms, it is true, were often delayed for weeks
but the household chaplains of the palace were always at hand,
night and day, to baptize them in the very agonies of death.
[Endnote: 3] We must presume, therefore, that William Shakspeare
was born on some day very little anterior to that of his baptism;
and the more so because the season of the year was lovely and
genial, the 23d of April in 1564, corresponding in fact with what
we now call the 3d of May, so that, whether the child was to be
carried abroad, or the clergyman to be summoned, no hindrance would
arise from the weather. One only argument has sometimes struck us
for supposing that the 22d might be the day, and not the 23d; which
is, that Shakspeare's sole granddaughter, Lady Barnard, was married
on the 22d of April, 1626, ten years exactly from the poet's death;
and the reason for choosing this day _might_ have had a reference to
her illustrious grandfather's birthday, which, there is good reason
for thinking, would be celebrated as a festival in the family for
generations. Still this choice _may_ have been an accident, or
governed merely by reason of convenience. And, on the whole, it is as
well perhaps to acquiesce in the old belief, that Shakspeare was born
and died on the 23d of April. We cannot do wrong if we drink to his
memory on both 22d and 23d.

On a first review of the circumstances, we have reason to feel no
little perplexity in finding the materials for a life of this
transcendent writer so meagre and so few; and amongst them the
larger part of doubtful authority. All the energy of curiosity
directed upon this subject, through a period of one hundred and
fifty years, (for so long it is since Betterton the actor began to
make researches,) has availed us little or nothing. Neither the
local traditions of his provincial birthplace, though sharing with
London through half a century the honor of his familiar presence,
nor the recollections of that brilliant literary circle with whom
he lived in the metropolis, have yielded much more than such an
outline of his history, as is oftentimes to be gathered from the
penurious records of a grave-stone. That he lived, and that he
died, and that he was "a little lower than the angels;"--these make
up pretty nearly the amount of our undisputed report. It may be
doubted, indeed, whether at this day we arc as accurately
acquainted with the life of Shakspeare as with that of Chaucer,
though divided from each other by an interval of two centuries, and
(what should have been more effectual towards oblivion) by the wars
of the two roses. And yet the traditional memory of a rural and a
sylvan region, such as Warwickshire at that time was, is usually
exact as well as tenacious; and, with respect to Shakspeare in
particular, we may presume it to have been full and circumstantial
through the generation succeeding to his own, not only from the
curiosity, and perhaps something of a scandalous interest, which
would pursue the motions of one living so large a part of his life
at a distance from his wife, but also from the final reverence and
honor which would settle upon the memory of a poet so predominently
successful; of one who, in a space of five and twenty years, after
running a bright career in the capital city of his native land, and
challenging notice from the throne, had retired with an ample
fortune, created by his personal efforts, and by labors purely
intellectual.

How are we to account, then, for that deluge, as if from Lethe,
which has swept away so entirely the traditional memorials of one
so illustrious? Such is the fatality of error which overclouds
every question connected with Shakspeare, that two of his principal
critics, Steevens and Malone, have endeavored to solve the
difficulty by cutting it with a falsehood. They deny in effect that
he _was_ illustrious in the century succeeding to his own, however
much he has since become so. We shall first produce their statements
in their own words, and we shall then briefly review them.

Steevens delivers _his_ opinion in the following terms: "How
little Shakspeare was once read, may be understood from Tate, who,
in his dedication to the altered play of King Lear, speaks of the
original as an obscure piece, recommended to his notice by a
friend; and the author of the Tatler, having occasion to quote a
few lines out of Macbeth, was content to receive them from
Davenant's alteration of that celebrated drama, in which almost
every original beauty is either awkwardly disguised or arbitrarily
omitted." Another critic, who cites this passage from Steevens,
pursues the hypothesis as follows: "In fifty years after his death,
Dryden mentions that he was then become _a little obsolete_.
In the beginning of the last century, Lord Shaftesbury complains of
his _rude unpolished style, and his antiquated phrase and
wit_. It is certain that, for nearly a hundred years after his
death, partly owing to the immediate revolution and rebellion, and
partly to the licentious taste encouraged in Charles II's time, and
perhaps partly to the incorrect state of his works, he was ALMOST
ENTIRELY NEGLECTED." This critic then goes on to quote with
approbation the opinion of Malone,--"that if he had been read,
admired, studied, and imitated, in the same degree as he is now,
the enthusiasm of some one or other of his admirers in the last age
would have induced him to make some inquiries concerning the
history of his theatrical career, and the anecdotes of his private
life." After which this enlightened writer re-affirms and clenches
the judgment he has quoted, by saying,--"His admirers, however,
_if he had admirers in that age_, possessed no portion of such
enthusiasm."

It may, perhaps, be an instructive lesson to young readers, if we
now show them, by a short sifting of these confident dogmatists,
how easy it is for a careless or a half-read man to circulate the
most absolute falsehoods under the semblance of truth; falsehoods
which impose upon himself as much as they do upon others. We
believe that not one word or illustration is uttered in the
sentences cited from these three critics, which is not
_virtually_ in the very teeth of the truth.

To begin with Mr. Nahum Tate. This poor grub of literature, if he
did really speak of Lear as "an _obscure_ piece, recommended
to his notice by a friend," of which we must be allowed to doubt,
was then uttering a conscious falsehood. It happens that Lear was
one of the few Shakspearian dramas which had kept the stage
unaltered. But it is easy to see a mercenary motive in such an
artifice as this. Mr. Nahum Tate is not of a class of whom it can
be safe to say that they are "well known:" they and their desperate
tricks are essentially obscure, and good reason he has to exult in
the felicity of such obscurity; for else this same vilest of
travesties, Mr. Nahum's Lear, would consecrate his name to
everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged to the age of Dryden
rather than of Pope: he "flourished," if we can use such a phrase
of one who was always withering, about the era of the Revolution;
and his Lear, we believe, was arranged in the year 1682. But the
family to which he belongs is abundantly recorded in the Dunciad,
and his own name will be found amongst its catalogues of heroes.

With respect to _the author of the Tatler_, a very different
explanation is requisite. Steevens means the reader to understand
Addison; but it does not follow that the particular paper in
question was from his pen. Nothing, however, could be more natural
than to quote from the common form of the play as then in
possession of the stage. It was _there_, beyond a doubt, that
a fine gentleman living upon town, and not professing any deep
scholastic knowledge of literature, (a light in which we are always
to regard the writers of the Spectator, Guardian, &c.,) would be
likely to have learned anything he quoted from Macbeth. This we say
generally of the writers in those periodical papers; but, with
reference to Addison in particular, it is time to correct the
popular notion of his literary character, or at least to mark it by
severer lines of distinction. It is already pretty well known, that
Addison had no very intimate acquaintance with the literature of
his own country. It is known, also, that he did not think such an
acquaintance any ways essential to the character of an elegant
scholar and _litterateur_. Quite enough he found it, and more
than enough for the time he had to spare, if he could maintain a
tolerable familiarity with the foremost Latin poets, and a very
slender one indeed with the Grecian. _How_ slender, we can see
in his "Travels." Of modern authors, none as yet had been published
with notes, commentaries, or critical collations of the text; and,
accordingly, Addison looked upon all of them, except those few who
professed themselves followers in the retinue and equipage of the
ancients, as creatures of a lower race. Boileau, as a mere imitator
and propagator of Horace, he read, and probably little else amongst
the French classics. Hence it arose that he took upon himself to
speak sneeringly of Tasso. To this, which was a bold act for his
timid mind, he was emboldened by the countenance of Boileau. Of the
elder Italian authors, such as Ariosto, and, _a fortiori_,
Dante, be knew absolutely nothing. Passing to our own literature,
it is certain that Addison was profoundly ignorant of Chaucer and
of Spenser. Milton only,--and why? simply because he was a
brilliant scholar, and stands like a bridge between the Christian
literature and the Pagan,--Addison had read and esteemed. There was
also in the very constitution of Milton's mind, in the majestic
regularity and planetary solemnity of its _epic_ movements,
something which he could understand and appreciate. As to the
meteoric and incalculable eccentricities of the _dramatic_
mind, as it displayed itself in the heroic age of our drama,
amongst the Titans of 1590-1630, they confounded and overwhelmed
him.

In particular, with regard to Shakspeare, we shall now proclaim a
discovery which we made some twenty years ago. We, like others,
from seeing frequent references to Shakspeare in the Spectator, had
acquiesced in the common belief, that although Addison was no doubt
profoundly unlearned in Shakspeare's language, and thoroughly
unable to do him justice, (and this we might well assume, since his
great rival Pope, who had expressly studied Shakspeare, was, after
all, so memorably deficient in the appropriate knowledge,)--yet,
that of course he had a vague popular knowledge of the mighty
poet's cardinal dramas. Accident only led us into a discovery of
our mistake. Twice or thrice we had observed, that if Shakspeare
were quoted, that paper turned out not to be Addison's; and at
length, by express examination, we ascertained the curious fact,
that Addison has never in one instance quoted or made any reference
to Shakspeare. But was this, as Steevens most disingenuously
pretends, to be taken as an exponent of the public feeling towards
Shakspeare? Was Addison's neglect representative of a general
neglect? If so, whence came Rowe's edition, Pope's, Theobald's, Sir
Thomas Hanmer's, Bishop Warburton's, all upon the heels of one
another? With such facts staring him in the face, how shameless
must be that critic who could, in support of such a thesis, refer
to " _the author of the Tatler_" contemporary with all these
editors. The truth is, Addison was well aware of Shakspeare's hold
on the popular mind; too well aware of it. The feeble constitution
of the poetic faculty, as existing in himself, forbade his
sympathizing with Shakspeare; the proportions were too colossal for
his delicate vision; and yet, as one who sought popularity himself,
he durst not shock what perhaps he viewed as a national prejudice.
Those who have happened, like ourselves, to see the effect of
passionate music and "deep-inwoven harmonics" upon the feeling of
an idiot, we may conceive what we mean. Such music does not utterly
revolt the idiot; on the contrary, it has a strange but a horrid
fascination for him; it alarms, irritates, disturbs, makes him
profoundly unhappy; and chiefly by unlocking imperfect glimpses of
thoughts and slumbering instincts, which it is for his peace to
have entirely obscured, because for him they can be revealed only
partially, and with the sad effect of throwing a baleful gleam upon
his blighted condition. Do we mean, then, to compare Addison with
an idiot? Not generally, by any means. Nobody can more sincerely
admire him where he was a man of real genius, viz., in his
delineations of character and manners, or in the exquisite
delicacies of his humor. But assuredly Addison, as a poet, was
amongst the sons of the feeble; and between the authors of Cato and
of King Lear there was a gulf never to be bridged over. [Endnote: 4]

But Dryden, we are told, pronounced Shakspeare already in his day
_"a little obsolete."_ Here now we have wilful, deliberate
falsehood. _Obsolete_, in Dryden's meaning, does not imply
that he was so with regard to his popularity, (the question then at
issue,) but with regard to his diction and choice of words. To cite
Dryden as a witness for any purpose against Shakspeare,--Dryden,
who of all men had the most ransacked wit and exhausted language in
celebrating the supremacy of Shakspeare's genius, does indeed
require as much shamelessness in feeling as mendacity in principle.

But then Lord Shaftesbury, who may be taken as half way between
Dryden and Pope, (Dryden died in 1700, Pope was then twelve years
old, and Lord S. wrote chiefly, we believe, between 1700 and 1710,)
"complains," it seems, "of his rude unpolished style, and his
antiquated phrase and wit." What if he does? Let the whole truth be
told, and then we shall see how much stress is to be laid upon such
a judgment. The second Lord Shaftesbury, the author of the
Characteristics, was the grandson of that famous political
agitator, the Chancellor Shaftesbury, who passed his whole life in
storms of his own creation. The second Lord Shaftesbury was a man
of crazy constitution, querulous from ill health, and had received
an eccentric education from his eccentric grandfather. He was
practised daily in _talking_ Latin, to which afterwards he
added a competent study of the Greek; and finally he became
unusually learned for his rank, but the most absolute and
undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has to show. He
sneers continually at the regular built academic pedant; but he
himself, though no academic, was essentially the very impersonation
of pedantry. No thought however beautiful, no image however
magnificent, could conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed
in English; but present him with the most trivial common-places in
Greek, and he unaffectedly fancied them divine; mistaking the
pleasurable sense of his own power in a difficult and rare
accomplishment for some peculiar force or beauty in the passage.
Such was the outline of his literary taste. And was it upon
Shakspeare only, or upon him chiefly, that he lavished his
pedantry? Far from it. He attacked Milton with no less fervor; he
attacked Dryden with a thousand times more. Jeremy Taylor he quoted
only to ridicule; and even Locke, the confidential friend of his
grandfather, he never alludes to without a sneer. As to Shakspeare,
so far from Lord Shaftesbury's censures arguing his deficient
reputation, the very fact of his noticing him at all proves his
enormous popularity; for upon system he noticed those only who
ruled the public taste. The insipidity of his objections to
Shakspeare may be judged from this, that he comments in a spirit of
absolute puerility upon the name _Desdemona_, as though
intentionally formed from the Greek word for _superstition_.
In fact, he had evidently read little beyond the list of names in
Shakspeare; yet there is proof enough that the irresistible beauty
of what little he _had_ read was too much for all his
pedantry, and startled him exceedingly; for ever afterwards he
speaks of Shakspeare as one who, with a little aid from Grecian
sources, really had something great and promising about him. As to
modern authors, neither this Lord Shaftesbury nor Addison read any
thing for the latter years of their lives but Bayle's Dictionary.
And most of the little scintillations of erudition, which may be
found in the notes to the Characteristics, and in the Essays of
Addison, are derived, almost without exception, and uniformly
without acknowledgment, from Bayle. [Endnote: 5]

Finally, with regard to the sweeping assertion, that "for nearly a
hundred years after his death Shakspeare was almost entirely
neglected," we shall meet this scandalous falsehood, by a rapid
view of his fortunes during the century in question. The tradition
has always been, that Shakspeare was honored by the especial notice
of Queen Elizabeth, as well as by that of James I. At one time we
were disposed to question the truth of this tradition; but that was
for want of having read attentively the lines of Ben Jonson to the
memory of Shakspeare, those generous lines which have so absurdly
been taxed with faint praise. Jonson could make no mistake on this
point; he, as one of Shakspeare's familiar companions, must have
witnessed at the very time, and accompanied with friendly sympathy,
every motion of royal favor towards Shakspeare. Now he, in words
which leave no room for doubt, exclaims,

"Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear;
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
_That so did take Eliza and our James."_

These princes, then, _were_ taken, were fascinated, with some
of Shakspeare's dramas. In Elizabeth the approbation would probably
be sincere. In James we can readily suppose it to have been
assumed; for he was a pedant in a different sense from Lord
Shaftesbury; not from undervaluing modern poetry, but from caring
little or nothing for any poetry, although he wrote about its
mechanic rules. Still the royal _imprimatur_ would be
influential and serviceable no less when offered hypocritically
than in full sincerity. Next let us consider, at the very moment of
Shakspeare's death, who were the leaders of the British youth, the
_principes juventutis_, in the two fields, equally important
to a great poet's fame, of rank and of genius. The Prince of Wales
and John Milton; the first being then about sixteen years old, the
other about eight. Now these two great powers, as we may call them,
these presiding stars over all that was English in thought and
action, were both impassioned admirers of Shakspeare. Each of them
counts for many thousands. The Prince of Wales [Endnote: 6] had
learned to appreciate Shakspeare, not originally from reading him,
but from witnessing the court representations of his plays at
Whitehall. Afterwards we know that he made Shakspeare his closet
companion, for he was reproached with doing so by Milton. And we
know also, from the just criticism pronounced upon the character
and diction of Caliban by one of Charles's confidential
counsellors, Lord Falkland, that the king's admiration of
Shakspeare had impressed a determination upon the court reading. As
to Milton, by double prejudices, puritanical and classical, his
mind had been preoccupied against the full impressions of
Shakspeare. And we know that there is such a thing as keeping the
sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, or state of
abeyance; an effort of self-conquest realized in more cases than
one by the ancient fathers, both Greek and Latin, with regard to
the profane classics. Intellectually they admired, and would not
belie their admiration; but they did not give their hearts
cordially, they did not abandon themselves to their natural
impulses. They averted their eyes and weaned their attention from
the dazzling object. Such, probably, was Milton's state of feeling
towards Shakspeare after 1642, when the theatres were suppressed,
and the fanatical fervor in its noontide heat. Yet even then he did
not belie his reverence intellectually for Shakspeare; and in his
younger days we know that he had spoken more enthusiastically of
Shakspeare, than he ever did again of any uninspired author. Not
only did he address a sonnet to his memory, in which he declares
that kings would wish to die, if by dying they could obtain such a
monument in the hearts of men; but he also speaks of him in his
_Il Penseroso_, as the tutelary genius of the English stage.
In this transmission of the torch (greek: lampadophoria) Dryden
succeeds to Milton; he was born nearly thirty years later; about
thirty years they were contemporaries; and by thirty years, or
nearly, Dryden survived his great leader. Dryden, in fact, lived
out the seventeenth century. And we have now arrived within nine
years of the era, when the critical editions started in hot
succession to one another. The names we have mentioned were the
great influential names of the century. But of inferior homage
there was no end. How came Betterton the actor, how came Davenant,
how came Rowe, or Pope, by their intense (if not always sound)
admiration for Shakspeare, unless they had found it fuming upwards
like incense to the Pagan deities in ancient times, from altars
erected at every turning upon all the paths of men?

But it is objected that inferior dramatists were sometimes
preferred to Shakspeare; and again, that vile travesties of
Shakspeare were preferred to the authentic dramas. As to the first
argument, let it be remembered, that if the saints of the chapel
are always in the same honor, because _there_ men are simply
discharging a duty, which once due will be due for ever; the saints
of the theatre, on the other hand, must bend to the local genius,
and to the very reasons for having a theatre at all. Men go thither
for amusement. This is the paramount purpose, and even acknowledged
merit or absolute superiority must give way to it. Does a man at
Paris expect to see Moliere reproduced in proportion to his
admitted precedency in the French drama? On the contrary, that very
precedency argues such a familiarization with his works, that those
who are in quest of relaxation will reasonably prefer any recent
drama to that which, having lost all its novelty, has lost much of
its excitement. We speak of ordinary minds; but in cases of
_public_ entertainments, deriving part of their power from
scenery and stage pomp, novelty is for all minds an essential
condition of attraction. Moreover, in some departments of the
comic, Beaumont and Fletcher, when writing in combination, really
had a freedom and breadth of manner which excels the comedy of
Shakspeare. As to the altered Shakspeare as taking precedency of
the genuine Shakspeare, no argument can be so frivolous. The public
were never allowed a choice; the great majority of an audience even
now cannot be expected to carry the real Shakspeare in their mind,
so as to pursue a comparison between that and the alteration. Their
comparisons must be exclusively amongst what they have
opportunities of seeing; that is, between the various pieces
presented to them by the managers of theatres. Further than this,
it is impossible for them to extend their office of judging and
collating; and the degenerate taste which substituted the caprices
of Davenant, the rants of Dryden, or the filth of Tate, for the
jewellery of Shakspeare, cannot with any justice be charged upon
the public, not one in a thousand of whom was furnished with any
means of comparing, but exclusively upon those (viz., theatrical
managers,) who had the very amplest. Yet even in excuse for
_them_ much may be said. The very length of some plays
compelled them to make alterations. The best of Shakspeare's
dramas, King Lear, is the least fitted for representation; and,
even for the vilest alteration, it ought in candor to be considered
that possession is nine points of the law. He who would not have
introduced, was often obliged to retain.

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