Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new;
Most true it is that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely;

the application of which is made clear by the next sonnet, in which he
distinctly alludes to his profession.

There is this unmistakable stamp on all the great poets--that, however
in little things they may fall below themselves, whenever there comes a
great and noble thing to say, they say it greatly and nobly, and bear
themselves most easily in the royalties of thought and language. There
is not a mature play of Shakespeare's in which great ideas do not jut up
in mountainous permanence, marking forever the boundary of provinces of
thought, and known afar to many kindreds of men.

And it is for this kind of sight, which we call insight, and not for any
faculty of observation and description, that we value the poet. It is in
proportion as he has this that he is an adequate expresser, and not a
juggler with words. It is by means of this that for every generation of
man he plays the part of "namer." Before him, as before Adam, the
creation passes to be named anew: first the material world; then the
world of passions and emotions; then the world of ideas. But whenever a
great imagination comes, however it may delight itself with imaging the
outward beauty of things, however it may seem to flow thoughtlessly away
in music like a brook, yet the shadow of heaven lies also in its depth
beneath the shadow of earth. Continually the visible universe suggests
the invisible. We are forever feeling this in Shakespeare. His
imagination went down to the very bases of things, and while his
characters are the most natural that poet ever created, they are also