Otherwise he should announce himself as a mere echo,
a middleman, a distributor. Our need is for more light. This can be
given only by an independent seer who
"Lends a precious seeing to the eye."
All great authors are seers. "Perhaps if we should meet Shakspeare,"
says Emerson, "we should not be conscious of any steep inferiority: no,
but of great equality; only he possessed a strange skill of using, of
classifying his facts, which we lacked. For, notwithstanding our utter
incapacity to preduce anything like HAMLET or OTHELLO, we see the
perfect reception this wit and immense knowledge of life and liquid
eloquence find in us all." This aggrandisement of our common stature
rests on questionable ground. If our capacity of being moved by
Shakspeare discloses a community, our incapacity of producing HAMLET no
less discloses our inferiority. It is certain that could we meet
Shakspeare we should find him strikingly like ourselves---with the same
faculties, the same sensibilities, though not in the same degree. The
secret of his power over us lies, of course, in our having the capacity
to appreciate him.
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