I saw rising about me
the vanished life, which the dramatist knew so well that its secrets
of conviction and temperament were all open to him; in architecture,
poetry, religion, politics, and manners, it was quietly rebuilded for
me in such wise that my own imagination was stirred to meet the talker
half-way, and to fill in the outlines of a picture so swiftly and
skilfully sketched. When I went to the play I went as a contemporary
of its writer might have gone. I did not need to enter into it, for it
had already entered into me. A man of scholarship could have set the
period before me in a mass of facts; a man of culture alone could give
me power to share, for an evening at least, its spirit and life.
These personal illustrations will be pardoned, because they bring out
in the most concrete way that special quality which marks the
possession of culture in the deepest sense. That quality allies it
very closely with genius itself, in certain aspects of that rare and
inexplicable gift. For one of the most characteristic qualities of
genius is its power of divination, of sharing alien or diverse
experiences.
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