THE MIND OF SHAKESPERE
sionally, and who speaks so spontaneously that he takes no account of his utterance? He never blotted a line, if we believe Ben Jonson; and even if we do not believe him, it is harder to prove that Shakspere's second thought is in any of the texts, than it is to conceive of his mind at its best as unspoiled by intention or reconsideration, like the mind of a child whose penetrating, unconscious criticism of life has not yet been ruined by blame or praise. With such a conception, the known facts of Shakspere's life cease to be puzzling. Hawthorne wondered that poetic genius could grow up in the small Stratford house, where there was no privacy. Probably Hawthorne's meditative genius could not have grown up there, but for Shakspere's mind there could be no happier school. At all times and places his mental process was normal; he needed no privacy for
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