He is indeed the true
enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon
the imagination and the heart. Under the wizard influence of
Shakespeare I had been walking all day in a complete delusion. I
had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, which
tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. I had been
surrounded with fancied beings, with mere airy nothings conjured
up by poetic power, yet which, to me, had all the charm of
reality. I had heard Jaques soliloquize beneath his oak; had
beheld the fair Rosalind and her companion adventuring through
the woodlands; and, above all, had been once more present in
spirit with fat Jack Falstaff and his contemporaries, from the
august Justice Shallow down to the gentle Master Slender and the
sweet Anne Page. Ten thousand honors and blessings on the bard
who has thus gilded the dull realities of life with innocent
illusions, who has spread exquisite and unbought pleasures in my
chequered path, and beguiled my spirit in many a lonely hour with
all the cordial and cheerful sympathies of social life!
As I crossed the bridge over the Avon on my return, I paused to
contemplate the distant church in which the poet lies buried, and
could not but exult in the malediction which has kept his ashes
undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults.
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