Even were Shakespeare's self alive again, or he now but fifteen years
since gone home to Shakespeare, {220} of whom Charles Lamb said well that
none could have written his book about Shakespeare but either himself
alone or else he of whom the book was written, yet could we not hope that
either would have any new thing to tell us of the _Tempest_, the
_Winter's Tale_, and _Cymbeline_. And for ourselves, what else could we
do but only ring changes on the word beautiful as Celia on the word
wonderful in her laughing litany of love? or what better or what more can
we do than in the deepest and most heartfelt sense of an old conventional
phrase, thank God and Shakespeare? for how to praise either for such a
gift of gifts we know not, knowing only and surely that none will know
for ever.
True or false, and it would now seem something less than likely to be
true, the fancy which assumed the last lines spoken by Prospero to be
likewise the last words of the last completed work of Shakespeare was
equally in either case at once natural and graceful. There is but one
figure sweeter than Miranda's and sublimer than Prospero's in all the
range of heaven on which the passion of our eyes could rest at parting.
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