not only true, as Browning said so
often and in so many kinds of speech,
that a man's greatest good fortune is
to have the opportunity of giving out
freely and powerfully all the force that
is in him, but it is also true that al-
most equal good fortune attends the
man who has the opportunity of re-
ceiving truth and instruction through
a wide and rich experience.

But individual experience, however
inclusive and deep, is necessarily lim-
ited, and the life of the greatest man
would be confined within narrow
boundaries if he were shut within the
circle of his own individual contact
with things and persons. If Shake-
speare had written of those things only
of which he had personal knowledge,
of those experiences in which he had
personally shared, his contribution to
literature would be deeply interesting,

[[166]]

p165 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p166w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p167

v?