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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
125
XXVII.
To-day
I
have
read
The
Tempest.
It
is
perhaps
the
play
that
I
love
best,
and,
because
I
seem
to
myself
to
know
it
so
well,
I
commonly
pass
it
over
in
opening
the
book.
Yet,
as
always
in
regard
to
Shakespeare,
having
read
it
once
more,
I
find
that
my
knowledge
was
less
complete
than
I
supposed.
So
it
would
be,
live
as
long
as
one
might;
so
it
would
ever
be,
whilst
one
had
strength
to
turn
the
pages
and
a
mind
left
to
read
them.
I
like
to
believe
that
this
was
the
poet's
last
work,
that
he
wrote
it
in
his
home
at
Stratford,
walking
day
by
day
in
the
fields
which
had
taught
his
boyhood
to
love
rural
England.
It
is
ripe
fruit
of
the
supreme
imagination,
perfect
craft
of
the
master
hand.
For
a
man
whose
life's
business
it
has
been
to
study
the
English
tongue,
what
joy
can
equal
that
of
marking
the
happy
ease
wherewith
Shakespeare
surpasses,
in
mere
command
of
words,
every
achievement
of
those
even
who,
apart
from
him,
are
great?
I
could
fancy
that,
in
The
Tempest,
he
wrought
with
a
peculiar
consciousness
of
this
power,
smiling
as
the
word
of
inimitable
felicity,
the
phrase
of
incomparable
cadence,
was
whispered
to
him
by
the
Ariel
that
was
his
genius.
He
seems
to
sport
with
language,
to
amuse
himself
with
new
discovery
of
its
resources.
From
king
to
beggar,
men
of
every
rank
and
every
order
of
mind
have
spoken
with
his
lips;
he
has
uttered
the
lore
of
fairyland;
now
it
pleases
him
to
create
a
being
neither
man
nor
fairy,
a
something
between
brute
and
human
nature,
and
to
endow
its
purposes
with
words.
These
words,
how
they
smack
of
the
moist
and
spawning
earth,
of
the
life
of
creatures
that
cannot
rise
above
the
soil!
We
do
not
think
of
it
enough;
we
stint
our
wonder
because
we
fall
short
in
appreciation.
A
miracle
is
worked
before
us,
and
we
scarce
give
heed;
it
has
become
familiar
to
our
minds
as
any
other
of
nature's
marvels,
which
we
rarely
pause
to
reflect
upon.
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