passage is written in the later style, the second supposition appears the more probable. Finally, it is worthy of remark that both the French officers who figure in this play as First Lord and Second Lord are somewhat strangely named Dumain, and that in 'Love's Labour's Lost' Dumain is also the name of that one of the three attendants and brothers in love of the King who has a post in the army; which, when taken in connection with other circumstances, is at least a hint of some relation between the two plays."

If the reader who has gone thoughtfully through the plays in the course which I have indicated will take up this one, he will find in the very first scene evidence and illustration of these views. It is almost entirely in prose, which itself shows the weight of Shakespeare's mature hand. The first blank verse is the speech of the Countess, in which she gives a mother's counsel to Bertram as he is setting out for the wars, as is pointed out above, and which is unmistakably of the "Hamlet" period. Then comes a speech by Helen beginning,

O were that all! I think not on my father:

And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him,

Act I. Sc. 1.

and ending with this charming passage, referring to the growth of her love for Bertram :

'T was pretty, though a plague,

To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table; heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here?

Act I. Sc. 1.

It is needless to say to the advanced student of

my

Shakespeare's style that this is in his later manner. A little further on is Helen's speech to the detestable Parolles, beginning with the mutilated line, " Not virginity yet,” which is followed by some ten, in which she pours out in Euphuistic phrase her love for Bertram, saying that he has in her "a mother, and a mistress, and a friend, a counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;" and yet further,

His humble ambition, proud humility,

His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world
Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms
That blinking Cupid gossips.

Act I. Sc. 1.

This will remind the reader of Scott's Euphuist, Sir Piercie Shafton, who, if I remember aright, uses some of these very phrases, in which Shakespeare has beaten Lilly at his own weapons, and made his affected phraseology the vehicle of the touching utterance of real feeling. "Euphues" was published in 1580, when Shakespeare was only sixteen years old; and this passage, although it may have been written or perhaps altered later, was probably a part of the play as it was first produced. The scene ends with the following speech by Helen, which, for its peculiar characteristics, is worth quoting entire. The reader who will compare it with "Love's Labour's Lost" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" will have not a ment's doubt as to the time when it was written:

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
What power is it which mounts my love so high,
That makes me see and cannot feed mine eye?
The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
To join like likes and kiss like native things.

Impossible be strange attempts to those

That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose
What hath been cannot be: whoever strove

To show her merit that did miss her love?

The king's disease

- my project may deceive me,

But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me.

Act I. Sc. 1.

Besides its formal construction and its rhyme, this passage is overmuch afflicted with youngness of thought to be accepted as the product of any other than Shakespeare's very earliest period. Of like quality to this are other passages scattered through the play. For example, the Countess's speech, Act I. Sc. 3, beginning, "Even so it was with me;" all the latter part of Act II. Sc. 1, from Helen's speech, "What I can do," etc., to the end, seventy lines; passages in the third scene of this act, which the reader cannot now fail at once to detect for himself; Helen's letter, Act III. Sc. 4, and Parolles's, Act IV. Sc. 3; and various passages in the last act. Shakespeare, I have no doubt, wrote this play at first nearly all in rhyme in the earliest years of his dramatic life, and afterward, late in his career, possibly on two occasions, re-wrote it and gave it a new name; using prose, to save time and labor, in those passages the elevation of which did not require poetical treatment, and in those which were suited to such treatment giving us true although not highly finished specimens of his grand style.

The thoughtful reader who, having followed the course previously marked out, comes to the study of "Hamlet," "King Lear," and "Othello" needs me no longer as a guide, but is prepared to apprehend them justly, not only in their own greatness, but in their relative position as the product of their author's mind in its perfected and disciplined maturity, as the splendid triple crown of Shakespeare's genius.

No other dramatist, no other poet, has given the world anything that can for a moment be taken into consideration as equal to these tragedies; and Shakespeare himself left us nothing equal to any one of them, taken as a whole and in detail. The Roman plays, "Coriolanus," "Julius Cæsar," and "Antony and Cleopatra," particularly the last, should now receive his careful attention. In "The Winter's Tale," "The Tempest," and "Henry VIII." he will find the very last productions of Shakespeare's pen, and in the first and the third of these he will find marks of hasty work both in the versification and in the construction ; but the touch of the master is unmistakable quite through them all, and "The Tempest" is one of the most perfect of his works in all respects. No true lover of Shakespeare should neglect the "Sonnets," although many do neglect them. They are inferior to the plays; but only to the best parts of them.

As to helps to the understanding of Shakespeare, those who can understand him at all need none except a good critical edition. And by a good critical edition I mean only one which gives a good text, with notes where they are needed upon obscure constructions, obsolete words or phrases, manners and customs, and the like. Of the plays in the Clarendon Press selected series,1 better editions cannot be had, particularly for readers inexperienced in verbal criticism. Those who find any difficulty which the notes to those editions do not explain may be pretty sure that, with the exception of a very few passages the corruption of which is admitted on all hands, the trouble is not with Shakespeare or the editor. Shake

1 Including, I believe, The Tempest, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Richard II., Henry V., Richard III., Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar, Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear.

speare read in the way which I have indicated, and with the help of such an edition, has a high educating value, and in particular will give the reader an insight into the English language, if not a mastery of it, that is worth a course of all the text-books of grammar and rhetoric that have been written ten times

over.

Of criticism of what has been called the higher kind, I recommend the reading of very little, or better, none at all. Read Shakespeare; seek aid to understand his language, if that be in any way obscure to you; but that once comprehended, apprehension of his purpose and meaning will come untold to those who can attain it in any way. In my own edition I avoided as much as possible the introduction of æsthetic criticism, not because of its difficulty, for it is easy and alluring work; on the contrary, I availed myself of it when it was necessary as an aid to the settlement of the text, or of like questions; and by its use I venture to think that I succeeded in establishing some points of importance. But in my judgment the duty of an editor is performed when he puts the reader, as nearly as possible, in the same position for the apprehension of his author's meaning that he would have occupied if he had been contemporary with him and had received from him a correct copy of his writings. More than this seems to me to verge upon impertinence.

Upon this point I find myself supported by William Aldis Wright, who is in my judgment the ablest of all the living editors of Shakespeare; who brings to his task a union of scholarship, critical judgment, and

1 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and one of the editors of the Cambridge edition.