A
new world was thus opened to intellectual adventure at the very time
when the keel of Columbus had turned the first daring furrow of
discovery in that unmeasured ocean which still girt the known earth
with a beckoning horizon of hope and conjecture, which was still fed by
rivers that flowed down out of primeval silences, and which still
washed the shores of Dreamland. Under a wise, cultivated, and
firm-handed monarch also, the national feeling of England grew rapidly
more homogeneous and intense, the rather as the womanhood of the
sovereign stimulated a more chivalric loyalty,--while the new religion,
of which she was the defender, helped to make England morally, as it
was geographically, insular to the continent of Europe.
If circumstances could ever make a great national poet, here were all
the elements mingled at melting-heat in the alembic, and the lucky
moment of projection was clearly come. If a great national poet could
ever avail himself of circumstances, this was the occasion,--and,
fortunately, Shakspeare was equal to it. Above all, we esteem it lucky
that he found words ready to his use, original and untarnished,--types
of thought whose sharp edges were unworn by repeated impressions.
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