THE MIND OF SHAKESPERE
ful; no doubt his mind brooded on life; but in his plays he gives the results of clear vision, not the results of clear thinking.
Might we not find a clue to the secret in the behavior and expression of children before they are instructed as to what they ought to think and say? Who of us cannot recall at least one of their disconcertingly apposite remarks? Their naive pronouncements share with great poetry the double effect of echo and surprise; we who hear have felt our way towards some such idea, yet when it confronts us we are startled. For highly conventionalized people, like Tennyson's spinster, children in their talkative moods are almost demoniacal,
"a-haxin ma hawkward questions, an saayin ondecent things."
But their youthful penetration is not solely a cause of embarrassment. Some-
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