When Lanier returned from Florida he tried to get various positions which might enable him to secure a livelihood. A lectureship at Johns Hopkins University, -- about which President Gilman had talked with him in 1876 -- a librarian's position in the Peabody Library, and a place in some of the departments of the government in Washington, -- all these were sought for in vain. One of the saddest commentaries on the condition of political life in the seventies is that Lanier was not able to secure even a clerkship in any department. The days of civil service reform and the time when a commissioner of civil service would urge the application for government positions by Southern men had not yet come. "Inasmuch," Lanier says in a letter to Mr. Gibson Peacock, June 13, 1877, "as I had never been a party man of any sort, I did not see with what grace I could ask any appointment; and furthermore I could not see it to be delicate, on general principles, for me to make PERSONAL application for any particular office. . . . My name has been mentioned to Mr. Sherman (and to Mr. Evarts, I believe) by quite cordially disposed persons. But I do not think any formal application has been entered, -- though I do not know. I HOPE not; for then the reporters will get hold of it, and I scarcely know what I should do if I could see my name figuring alongside of Jack Brown's and Foster Blodgett's and the others of my native State."* It was the same year in which Bayard Taylor was nominated as minister to Germany and Lowell as minister to Spain, but Lanier could not obtain a consulate to France or even the humblest position, "seventyfive dollars a month and the like," in any department in Washington.
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* `Letters', p. 43.
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Under these circumstances he wrote what are perhaps the most pathetic words in all his letters. "Altogether," he says, "it seems as if there wasn't any place for me in this world, and if it were not for May I should certainly quit it, in mortification at being so useless."* He did not remain in this mood long, however. He settled in Baltimore with his family in November, 1877, in four rooms arranged somewhat as a French flat, and a little later in a cottage, about which he writes enthusiastically to his friends. There is no better illustration of his playfulness and his ability to get the most out of everything than his letter to Gibson Peacock: --
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* ‘Letters’, p.46.
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33 Denmead St., Baltimore, Md.,
January 6, 1878.
The painters, the whitewashers, the plumbers, the locksmiths, the carpenters, the gasfitters, the stove-put-up-ers, the carmen, the piano-movers, the carpet-layers, -- all these have I seen, bargained with, reproached for bad jobs, and finally paid off: I have also coaxed my landlord into all manner of outlays for damp walls, cold bathrooms, and other like matters: I have furthermore bought at least three hundred and twenty-seven household utensils which suddenly came to be absolutely necessary to our existence: I have moreover hired a colored gentlewoman who is willing to wear out my carpets, burn out my range, freeze out my water-pipes, and be generally useful: I have also moved my family into our new home, have had a Xmas tree for the youngsters, have looked up a cheap school for Harry and Sidney, have discharged my daily duties as first flute of the Peabody Orchestra, have written a couple of poems and part of an essay on Beethoven and Bismarck, have accomplished at least a hundred thousand miscellaneous necessary nothings, -- and have NOT, in consequence of the aforesaid, sent to you and my dear Maria the loving greetings whereof my heart has been full during the whole season. Maria's cards were duly distributed, and we were all touched with her charming little remembrances. With how much pleasure do I look forward to the time when I may kiss her hand in my own house! We are in a state of supreme content with our new home: it really seems to me as incredible that myriads of people have been living in their own homes heretofore as to the young couple with a first baby it seems impossible that a great many other couples have had similar prodigies. It is simply too delightful. Good heavens, how I wish that the whole world had a Home!
I confess I AM a little nervous about the gas-bills, which must come in, in the course of time; and there are the water-rates, and several sorts of imposts and taxes: but then, the dignity of being liable for such things (!) is a very supporting consideration. No man is a Bohemian who has to pay water-rates and a street-tax. Every day when I sit down in my dining-room -- MY dining-room! -- I find the wish growing stronger that each poor soul in Baltimore, whether saint or sinner, could come and dine with me. How I would carve out the merry thoughts for the old hags! How I would stuff the big wall-eyed rascals till their rags ripped again! There was a knight of old times who built the dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so that every wayfarer must perforce pass through: there the traveler, rich or poor, found always a trencher and wherewithal to fill it. Three times a day, in my own chair at my own table, do I envy that knight and wish that I might do as he did.*
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* ‘Letters’, p.49.
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He was soon to find another joy in the study of Old and Middle English literature, which he entered upon with unbounded zest and energy. As has been seen in previous chapters, Lanier had been all his life a reader of the best books. Before he came to Baltimore to live he had impressed Paul Hamilton Hayne with his unusually thorough knowledge of Chaucer and the Elizabethan poets. He was also familiar with modern English literature. Now, however, he was to begin the study of literature in a systematic and more scholarly way. A distinct advance in his intellectual life must, therefore, be dated from the winter of 1877-78, when he began to study English with the aid of the Peabody Library.
For purposes of research this library was, during Lanier's lifetime, one of the best in America. Mr. Peabody indicated its character when he said, in his announcement of the gift, that it was to be "well furnished in every department of knowledge, to be for the free use of all persons who may desire to consult it, to satisfy the researches of students who may be engaged in the pursuit of knowledge not ordinarily obtainable in the private libraries of the country." It was modeled on the plan of the British Museum, and he was anxious to "engraft in Baltimore the offshoots of the highest culture obtainable in the great capitals of Europe." In accordance with his idea, the provost, Dr. Morison, had in the selection of the library consulted specialists in the leading universities of the country. Besides containing the scientific journals in the various departments of human learning, it was especially rich in the publications of the Early English Text Society, the Chaucer Society, the Percy Society, and in the reprints of Elizabethan literature made by Alexander B. Grosart and other English scholars. There had been some complaint on the part of the citizens of Baltimore that the library could not be of more general use. To meet this Dr. Morison said in 1871: "We cannot create scholars or readers to use our library, but we can make a collection of books which all scholars will appreciate, when they shall appear among us as they surely will some day." This prophecy was fulfilled when Johns Hopkins University was established in 1876. In addition to the excellent collection of books there was a carefully prepared catalogue, which made the investigator's task much easier.
To the Peabody thus furnished and arranged, Lanier came with an eagerness of mind that few men have had. Writing to J. F. Kirk, August 24, 1878, he said, speaking of an edition of Elizabethan sonnets which he was preparing: "I have found the Peabody Library here a rich mine in the collection of material for my book, especially as affording sources for the presentation of the anonymous poems in the early collections which are very interesting." He always expressed himself as grateful that he could find his working material so easily accessible.
Of his habits of study one of the assistant librarians says: "He usually came in the morning, occupying the same seat at the end of the table, where he worked until lunch time, so absorbed with his studies that he scarcely ever raised his eyes to notice anything around him. During the winters that he was a member of the Peabody Orchestra he came back in the afternoons when the rehearsals were held, bringing his flute with him, and continued his studies until it was time to go into the rehearsal. He continued in this way until his increasing weakness prevented him from leaving home, when he would write notes to the desk attendants asking them to verify some reference, or copy some extract for him, and frequently his wife would come to the library to do the copying for him."*
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* Letter of Mr. John Park to the author.
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This library was Lanier's university. While other Southerners were finding their way to German universities, he was training himself in the methods and ideals of the modern scholar. The dream of his college days was being fulfilled. He lacked the patient and careful training of men who have a lifetime to devote to some special field of work. He could not in the short time at his disposal explore the fields of learning which he entered. Into those two or three years of study and research, however, were crowded results and attainments that many less gifted men, working with less prodigious zest and power, do not reach in a decade.
Writing to Bayard Taylor, October 20, 1878, he said: "Indeed, I have been so buried in study for the past six months that I know not news nor gossip of any kind. Such days and nights of glory as I have had! I have been studying Early English, Middle English, and Elizabethan poetry, from Beowulf to Ben Jonson: and the world seems twice as large."* No sooner had he begun this work than he desired to communicate to others his own pleasure in English literature. In March, 1878, he began a series of lectures at the residence of Mrs. Edgworth Bird, who had welcomed him to her home when he first came to Baltimore. These lectures on Elizabethan poetry were attended by many of the most prominent men and women of the city. The following winter Lanier arranged for a series of lectures at the Peabody Institute. "In the spring of 1878," says one of his friends, "I was speaking of the desultory study which women so often do and of how much better it would be if all this energy could be directed to some definite end. He said: `That is just what I am purposing. Next winter I am going to have a Shakespearean revival for women,' and he then proceeded to tell me of the prospective lectures." He had become imbued with the idea that much might be done in the way of establishing "Schools for Grown People" in all the leading cities of America. He writes to Gibson Peacock: --
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* `Letters', p. 214.
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180 St. Paul St., Baltimore, Md.,
November 5, 1878.
I have been "allowing" -- as the Southern negroes say -- that I would write you, for the last two weeks; but I had a good deal to say, and haven't had time to say it.
During my studies for the last six or eight months a thought which was at first vague has slowly crystallized into a purpose, of quite decisive aim. The lectures which I was invited to deliver last winter before a private class met with such an enthusiastic reception as to set me thinking very seriously of the evident delight with which grown people found themselves receiving systematic instruction in a definite study. This again put me upon reviewing the whole business of Lecturing which has risen to such proportions in our country, but which, every one must feel, has now reached its climax and must soon give way -- like all things -- to something better. The fault of the lecture system as at present conducted -- a fault which must finally prove fatal to it -- is that it is too fragmentary, and presents too fragmentary a mass -- `indigesta moles' -- of facts before the hearers. Now if, instead of such a series as that of the popular Star Course (for instance) in Philadelphia, a scheme of lectures should be arranged which would amount to the SYSTEMATIC PRESENTATION of a GIVEN SUBJECT, then the audience would receive a substantial benefit, and would carry away some genuine possession at the end of the course. The subject thus systematically presented might be either scientific (as Botany, for example, or Biology popularized, and the like) or domestic (as detailed in the accompanying printed extract under the "Household" School) or artistic or literary.
This stage of the investigation put me to thinking of schools for grown people. Men and women leave college nowadays just at the time when they are really prepared to study with effect. There is indeed a vague notion of this abroad, but it remains vague. Any intelligent grown man or woman readily admits that it would be well -- indeed, many whom I have met sincerely desire -- to pursue some regular course of thought; but there is no guidance, no organized means of any sort, by which people engaged in ordinary avocations can accomplish such an aim.
Here, then, seems to be, first, a universal admission of the usefulness of organized intellectual pursuit for business people; secondly, an underlying desire for it by many of the people themselves; and thirdly, an existing institution (the lecture system) which, if the idea were once started, would quickly adapt itself to the new conditions. In short, the present miscellaneous lecture courses ought to die and be born again as `Schools for Grown People'.
It was with the hope of effecting at least the beginning OF a beginning of such a movement that I got up the "Shakespeare Course" in Baltimore. I wished to show, to such a class as I could assemble, how much more genuine profit there would be in studying AT FIRST HAND, under the guidance of an enthusiastic interpreter, the writers and conditions of a particular epoch (for instance) than in reading any amount of commentary or in hearing any number of miscellaneous lectures on subjects which range from Palestine to Pottery in the course of a week. With this view I arranged my own part of the Shakespeare course so as to include a quite thorough presentation of the whole SCIENCE of poetry as preparatory to a serious and profitable study of some of the greatest singers in our language.*
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* `Letters', p. 53.
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In accordance with this idea he drew up a scheme for four independent series of class lectures, directed particularly to the systematic guidance of persons -- especially ladies -- who wished to extend the scope of their culture. There were to be schools of (1) English Literature, (2) the Household, (3) Natural Science, and (4) Art. Thirty lectures were to be given in each school, he to give those on English Literature. He hoped that he would be able to arrange for such series in Washington, Philadelphia, and Southern cities. This scheme is a striking anticipation of popular lectures that have been given in New York city during the past few years, as well as of the University Extension lectures since established at the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and other American universities.
The only part of the scheme that took shape was the Shakespeare course planned for the Peabody Institute. In addition to twenty-four lectures by Lanier, two lectures were to be given by Prof. B. L. Gildersleeve, -- "one on the Timon of Lucian, compared with Timon of Shakespeare, and one on Macbeth and Agamemnon; two on the State of Natural Science in Shakespeare's Time, by Prof. Ira Remsen; two on Religion in Shakespeare's Time, by Dr. H. B. Adams; two readings from Marlowe's Faust and three lectures on the Mystery Plays as illustrated by the Oberammergau Passion Play, by Prof. E. G. Daves; and three lectures on the Early English Comedy as illustrated by Gammer Gurton's Needle and Ralph Royster Doyster, by Col. Richard M. Johnston."
Of these only Lanier's lectures were given, and they did not prove to be a financial success, although they accomplished much good in Baltimore. Published as they have been recently,* they are among the most valuable aids in the study of Lanier's personality and of his attitude to literature. It must be borne in mind that they were not written for publication, nor for an academic audience, and that the only proper way to estimate them is to compare them with lectures of a similar kind, -- Lowell's Lowell Institute lectures, for instance. Viewed from this standpoint, one cannot but marvel at the carefulness with which Lanier prepared his lectures, and the vital interest he took in work which has been disagreeable to men of similar temperament. Any one who expects to find in them contributions to present day knowledge of the subjects touched upon will be disappointed; but no one can read them without enjoying the poet's naive enthusiasm and his clear insight into things that many a plodder never sees, nor can he fail to be impressed with the modernness of his mind. He must have been a successful teacher, -- he uses every effort to fix the attention of his hearers, he summarizes frequently, illustrates, vitalizes his subject.
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners'. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903.
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There is evident throughout these lectures the most enthusiastic appreciation of literature and of its place in the life of the world. Few men ever enjoyed reading more than Lanier. He knew something of Stevenson's joy of being "rapt clean out of himself by a book," -- the process was "absorbing and voluptuous". And this enthusiasm he shared with all his hearers. After much criticism of the scientific type by followers of Arnold and Brunetiere, after many class-room lectures and recitations, in which the spiritual value of literature has been lost sight of, it is altogether refreshing to read the almost childlike expressions of Lanier. One feels often that the worship of what he calls his "sweet masters" is overdone, and that he praises far too highly some obscure sonneteer; but there is in his work the spirit of the romantic critic -- the zest of Charles Lamb and Hazlitt for the old masters. Lowell, speaking of a period in his own life when he was delivering his early lectures at Lowell Institute, said: "Then I was at the period in life when thoughts rose in covies, . . . a period of life when it doesn't seem as if everything has been said; when a man overestimates the value of what specially interests himself, . . . when he conceives himself a missionary, and is persuaded that he is saving his fellows from the perdition of their souls if he convert them from belief in some aesthetic heresy. That is the mood of mind in which one may read lectures with some assurance of success. . . . This is the pleasant peril of enthusiasm." There could not be a better description of Lanier's lectures. Longfellow, referring to some lectures on Dante which he had repeated often, said: "It is become an old story to me. I am tired." Lanier knew nothing of this `ennui'. He fretted at times over the fact that he had to give to work of this kind the time he might have given to his poetry, but there is not in his lectures a single note of weariness; there is always the freshness and exuberance of youth, the joy of discovery, of interpretation, of illuminating comment.
He had the power of making even the older English literature vital to a popular audience. An Anglo-Saxon poem was not to him primarily material for the study of philology, although he now and then tried to interest his hearers in the etymology of words -- it was a revelation of the life of a race in its childhood. While he lost in technical precision, he gave the listener a real grip on some old poem by which he could always remember it and relate it to other things. A few pages on "Beowulf", for instance, presenting some specially striking scenes therefrom in a translation that in rhythm and substance preserves the spirit of the original, would incite the members of his audience to at least a literary study of the Anglo-Saxon epic. By contrasting "The Address of the Soul to the Dead Body" with "Hamlet", he gave his hearers some clue to its interpretation -- he related it to an elementary religious mood.
Is not this passage calculated to make one realize the real meaning of "Beowulf", -- especially when accompanied by admirable translations?
"To our old ancestors there were many times when Nature must have seemed a true Grendel's mother, a veritable hag, mindful of mischief; and these monsters are not silly inventions, -- they are true types, ideals, removed very far, if you please, yet born of the old struggle of man against the wild beast for his meat, against the stern earth for his bread, against the cold that cracks his skin and wracks his bones, against the wind that whirls his ship over in the sea, the wave that drowns him, the lightning that consumes him. . . .
"And so, as I said, there is to me an indescribable pathos in these sombre pictures of Nature in our old Beowulf here, -- these drear marshes, these monster-haunted meres, that boil with blood and foam with tempests, these fast-rooted, joyless woods that overlean the waters, these enormous, nameless beasts that lie along on promontories all day and wreak vengeance on ships at night -- have you not seen them, headlands running out into the sea like great beasts with their forepaws extended? And is it not a huge Gothic picture of the wind rushing down the windy nesse . . . in the evening, and whelming the frail ships of the old Dane, the old Jute and Frisian and Saxon, in the sea? All these, I say, are mere outcroppings of the rude war which was not yet ended against Nature, traces of a time when Nature was still a savage Mother of Grendel, tearing and devouring the sons of men."*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. i, p. 55.
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Lanier believed strongly that the early English poems ought to be taught in schools and colleges. The following passage does not sound as revolutionary now as it did in 1879: --
"Surely it is time our popular culture were cited into the presence of the Fathers. That we have forgotten their works is in itself matter of mere impiety which many practical persons would consider themselves entitled to dismiss as a purely sentimental crime; but ignorance of their ways goes to the very root of growth.
"I count it a circumstance so wonderful as to merit some preliminary setting forth here, that with regard to the first seven hundred years of our poetry we English-speaking people appear never to have confirmed ourselves unto ourselves. While we often please our vanity with remarking the outcrop of Anglo-Saxon blood in our modern physical achievements, there is certainly little in our present art of words to show a literary lineage running back to the same ancestry. Of course it is always admitted that there WAS an English poetry as old to Chaucer as Chaucer is to us; but it is admitted with a certain inclusive and amateur vagueness removing it out of the rank of facts which involve grave and important duties. We can neither deny the fact nor the strangeness of it, that the English poetry written between the time of Aldhelm and Caedmon in the seventh century and that of Chaucer in the fourteenth century has never yet taken its place by the hearths and in the hearts of the people whose strongest prayers are couched in its idioms. It is not found in the tatters of use, on the floors of our children's playrooms; there are no illuminated boy's editions of it; it is not on the booksellers' counters at Christmas; it is not studied in our common schools; it is not printed by our publishers; it does not lie even in the dusty corners of our bookcases; nay, the pious English scholar must actually send to Germany for Grein's Bibliothek in order to get a compact reproduction of the body of Old English poetry.
. . . . .
"One will go into few moderately appointed houses in this country without finding a Homer in some form or other; but it is probably far within the truth to say that there are not fifty copies of Beowulf in the United States. Or again, every boy, though far less learned than that erudite young person of Macaulay's, can give some account of the death of Hector; but how many boys -- or, not to mince matters, how many men -- in America could do more than stare if asked to relate the death of Byrhtnoth? Yet Byrhtnoth was a hero of our own England in the tenth century, whose manful fall is recorded in English words that ring on the soul like arrows on armor. Why do we not draw in this poem -- and its like -- with our mother's milk? Why have we no nursery songs of Beowulf and the Grendel? Why does not the serious education of every English-speaking boy commence, as a matter of course, with the Anglo-Saxon grammar?"*
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* `Music and Poetry', p. 136. This quotation is an expansion of one in the lectures now under consideration. He evidently overstates his point, but the passage suggests what the study of old English meant to Lanier himself.
--
There would come from such study a strengthening of English prose and a deepening of culture. He continues: --
"For the absence of this primal Anglicism from our modern system goes -- as was said -- to the very root of culture. The eternal and immeasurable significance of that individuality in thought which flows into idiom in speech becomes notably less recognized among us. We do not bring with us out of our childhood the fibre of idiomatic English which our fathers bequeathed to us. A boy's English is diluted before it has become strong enough for him to make up his mind clearly as to the true taste of it. Our literature needs Anglo-Saxon iron, -- there is no ruddiness in its cheeks, and everywhere a clear lack of the red corpuscles."
Lanier was more thoroughly at home in the Elizabethan age, however. He reveled in its myriad-mindedness -- its adventures and exploits, its chivalry and romance. The sonnets especially appealed to him, for they abounded in conceits. One of the striking characteristics that he noted in the leading men of that age was the union of strength and tenderness. "All this love-making was manly," he says. "It was then as it is now, that the bravest are the tenderest. . . . Stout and fine Walter Raleigh pushes over to America, quite as ready to sigh a sonnet as to plant a colony. Valorous Philip Sidney, who can write as dainty a sonnet as any lover of them all, can at the same time dazzle the stern eyes of warriors with deeds of manhood before Zuetphen and touch their hearts to pity and admiration as he offers the cup of water -- himself being grievously wounded and in a rage of thirst -- to the dying soldier whose necessity is greater than his. Men's minds in this time were employed with big questions; the old theory of the universe is just losing its long hold upon the intellect, and people are busy with all space, trying to apprehend the relation of their globe to the solar system. To all this ferment the desperate conflict of the Catholic religion with the new form of faith now coming in adds an element of stern strength; men are pondering not only the physical relation of the earth to the heavens, but the spiritual relation of the soul to heaven and hell. This is no dandy period."*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. i, p. 168.
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"And if any one should say there is not time to read these poets," he says in a strain of excessive admiration, "I reply with vehemence that in any wise distribution of your moments, after you have read the Bible and Shakspere, you have no time to read anything until you have read these . . . old artists. They are so noble, so manful, so earnest; they have put into such perfect music that protective tenderness of the rugged man for the delicate woman which throbs all down the muscles of the man's life and turns every deed of strength into a deed of love; they have set the woman, as woman, upon such adorable heights of worship, and by that act have so immeasurably uplifted the whole plane upon which society moves; they have given to all earnest men and strong lovers such a dear ritual and litany of chivalric devotion; they have sung us such a high mass of constancy for our love; they have enlightened us with such celestial revelation of the possible Eden which the modern Adam and Eve may win back for themselves by faithful and generous affection; that -- I speak it with reverence -- they have made another religion of loyal love and have given us a second Bible of womanhood."*
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* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. i, p. 7.
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Following his study of the sonnet-writers of the Elizabethan age, comes a somewhat technical study of the pronunciation of Shakespeare's time -- a restatement of Ellis's monumental work on that subject. His discussion of music in Shakespeare's time has already been noticed. He next tried to reproduce for his class the domestic life of the age, commenting in full on the sermons, the plays, the customs of the time. In order to give unity to this study, he sketches in a somewhat fanciful way the boyhood of Shakespeare in Stratford and his early manhood in London. The most important part of the lectures, however, is his discussion of the growth of Shakespeare's mind and art, a study made possible by recent publications of the New Shakespeare Society. Lanier never wrote any more vigorous or eloquent prose than these chapters, although it must be said that he makes too much of the dramatist's personality as revealed in his plays. Two passages are quoted to indicate in the first place the standpoint from which he studied the plays, and in the second place to show his conception of the moral height attained by Shakespeare as compared with contemporary dramatists: --
"The keenest scholarship, the freest discussion, the widest search for external evidence, the most careful checking of conclusions by the Metrical Tests one after another, have all been applied to establish this general succession in time of these three plays;* and it is not in the least necessary to commit ourselves to the exact years here given in order to feel sure that these three plays represent three perfectly distinct epochs, separated from each other by several years, in Shakspere's spiritual existence. . . .
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* The `Midsummer Night's Dream', `Hamlet', and `The Tempest'.
--
"In short, the young eye already sees the twist and cross of life, but sees it as in a dream: and those of you who are old enough to look back upon your own young dream of life will recognize instantly that the dream is the only term which represents that unspeakable SEEING of things, without in the least REALIZING them, which brings about that the youth admits all we tell -- we older ones -- about life and the future, and, admitting it fully, nevertheless goes on right in the face of it to ACT just as if he knew nothing of it. In short, he sees as