on the springs of life, or as an inspiration of good thoughts and desires.  And in the further explication or amplification of the matter I shall take for granted that the old sophism of holding Shakespeare responsible for all that is said and done by his characters is thoroughly exploded; though it is not many years since a grave writer set him down as a denier of immortality; because, forsooth, in The Winter’s Tale he makes the rogue Autolycus say, “For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.”  This mode of judging is indeed so perverse or so ignorant, that to spend any words in refuting or reproving it would be a mere waste of breath; or, if there be any so innocent as to need help on that point, it is not to them that I write.

As to the exact features of Shakespeare’s own moral character as a man; whether or how far he was himself a model of virtuous living; in what measure the moral beauty of his poetical conceptions lived in the substance of his practical conversations; the little that is known touching the facts of his life does not enable us to judge.  The most we can say on this score is, that we have a few authentic notes of strong commendation, and nothing authentic whatever to set against them.  Thus Chettle, in his apology, tells us that “divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty”; and his editors, Heminge and Condell, in their dedication claim to have no other purpose than “to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.”  Ben Jonson, too, a pure and estimable man, who knew him well, and who was not apt to be over-indulgent in his judgments of men, speaks of him as “my beloved Shakespeare” and “my gentle Shakespeare”; and describes him as follows: 

            “Look, how the father’s face
    Lives in his issue, even so the race
    Of Shakespeare’s mind and manners brightly shines
    In his well-turned and true-filed lines.”

These things were said some seven years after the Poet’s death; and many years later the same stanch and truthful man speaks of him as “being indeed honest, and of an open and free nature.”  I do not now recall any other authentic testimonials to his moral character; and, considering how little is known of his life, it is rather surprising that we should have so much in evidence of his virtues as a man.  But it is with what he taught; not what he practised, that we are here mainly concerned:  with the latter indeed we have properly nothing to do, save as it may have influenced the former:  it is enough for our purpose that he saw and spoke the right, whether he acted it or not.  For, whatever his faults and infirmities and shortcomings as a man, it is certain that they did not infect his genius or taint his mind, so as to work it into any deflection from the straight and high path of moral and intellectual righteousness.