THE MIND OF SHAKESPERE
fancy's child, or with Arnold as a solitary peak, lifting above us inscrutable, unscanned. Nothing in this tradition would prohibit one more guess at Shakspere's mind. Yet in the newest explanation there will be a few things in common with those that went before. From the beginning the world has felt the naturalness of this well-poised genuis; he never dwelt apart, starlike. No explanation will satisfy us which does not make Shakspere's mind a thing of nature—even a normal thing, in kind if not in degree. From the beginning the world has acknowledged the comprehensiveness of his imagination; at times so slight a barrier of visible art divides the life he saw from his representation of it, that life itself appears the medium of his thought. No explanation of his mind will satisfy us which does not make reasonable this godlike grasp upon experience. From
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