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with of course public appreciation of their merits, the reply may be made that such appreciation was of the most partial description, most probably confined to the more enthusiastic or more ignorant play-goers who wished to have the printed work before them while witnessing the performance. Moreover, the fact is never to be lost sight of that if we know anything of Shakspere at all, we know that in business affairs he was most cautious, careful, and prudent-in the very midst of the production of his unequalled works prosecuting a neighbour at Stratford for £1 15s 10d, "being the price of malt sold and delivered to him at different times," and that hence he was not the man to lose any chance of making money by hesitating to interfere with the speculations of booksellers in his works, which, it is all but certain, he never did. Would that he had; we should then probably have known more about him! But in as far as the alleged popularity of the works is concerned, the broad and glaring facts of the case should be sufficient. The first collected edition of the works, the Folio of 1623, contained seventeen plays never before given to the public, amongst which were "The Tempest, "The Winter's Tale, 66 King John," "Macbeth," "Julius Cæsar," "Coriolanus," and "Antony and Cleopatra." Shakspere's death took place in 1616, and the first Folio was thus not issued until seven years afterwards. Another circumstance, showing how little known or cared for were Shakspere's works is this, that the grand tragedy of "Othello," although ascertained to have been on the stage in the year 1604, was not printed till eighteen years afterwards (1622), a year before the appearance of the Folio. Then, it so happened that after the issue of this so far complete edition of the works, a second issue was not called for until nine years afterwards, the third Folio being published so far onwards as 1664. Twenty-one years between the first and third edition of Shakspere's works! Was this a proof of popularity or of due recognition of such a genius? In point of fact, it appears that, leaving the stage out of view, the great artist remained all but unknown for more than a century. The proofs of this, however humiliating they may be to our pride as a literary people, are sufficiently numerous and striking. One notable example occurs at the very outset.

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In that most curious perhaps of all curious books, the "Anatomy of Melancholy," the complete edition of which was not issued till 1662, thirty-nine years after the

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appearance of the first Folio, the references to the poet are most meagre and scanty circumstance the more remarkable that Burton seems to have devoured every book, both ancient and modern, on which he could lay his hands. Chaucer is spoken of and quoted by Burton as the Homer of his age, Spenser is praised as the English Virgil, and Drayton - an almost unknown name now-is styled the English Ovid. Bacon, Marlowe, and other English writers, are also recognised; of Shakspere alone does Burton appear to have been ignorant! He is mentioned, it is true, as "an elegant poet," for Burton had read the "Venus and Adonis," and there are distinct allusions to the tragedy of "Romeo and Juliet" and to the comedy of "Much Ado about Nothing;" but the learned author, it is apparent, had no conception of the genius of Shakspere-had not, indeed, perused the greater portion of his works, which, had he known them, would have furnished him with more pointed and entertaining matter for illustrating the passions, the oddities, and peculiarities of mankind than all other English authors put together. Burton was the most devoted bookworm of his age, yet we are not permitted to doubt that he allowed his life to pass away without a knowledge of the world's greatest writer.

Another proof of the same fact lies before us in the shape of a now rare book published in 1693, entitled "A Short View of Tragedy-its Original, Excellency, and Corruption -with some Reflections on Shakespear, and other Practitioners for the Stage." The book bears to be written by "Mr Rymer, servant to their Majesties," and is dedicated "to the Right Honourable Charles, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, Baron Buckhurst," &c., &c. In this book, and under such high sanction, Shakspere is abused most unmercifully as a barbarous and inartistic writer, the tragedy of "Othello" being especially selected by the learned author -for Mr Rymer quotes profusely both Greek and Latinas the butt of his ridicule. How he treats the great dramatist may be guessed from the following slight samples :

"In the neighing of a horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there is a meaning, there is a lively expression, and, may I say, more humanity, than many times in the tragical flights of Shakespear.' (p. 96.)

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"Our Shakespear, doubtless, was a great master in this craft. penters and cobblers were the guides he followed. And it is then no wonder that we find so much farce and apocryphal matter in his tragedies. Thereby unhallowing the theatre, profaning the name of tragedy; and instead of representing men and manners, turning all morality, good sense, and humanity, into mockery and derision." (p. 111.)

Contrasting "Othello" with " Julius Cæsar," the same excellent judge says

"In the former play the poet might be the bolder, the persons being all his own creatures, and mere fiction. But here he sins not against nature and philosophy only, but against the most known history, and the memory of the noblest Romans, that ought to be sacred to all posterity. He might be familiar with Othello and Iago as his own natural acquaintance, but Cæsar and Brutus were above his conversation. To put them in fools' coats, and make them jack puddings in the Shakespear dress, is a sacrilege beyond anything in Spelman. The truth is, this author's head was full of villanous, unnatural images." (p. 148.)

Much more of this same kind of rubbish might be quoted from Mr Rymer's book, but the above may suffice. Such a publication was not necessarily any proper exponent of the general feeling regarding Shakspere, yet it may be taken as expressing the views, to some extent, of scholarly and fashionable society in the reign of William and Mary. For Mr Rymer was no common hack writer, but, on the contrary, a scholar of some eminence, trusted by the Government of the day, and the author of several historical compilations which are quoted by Hume in his "History of England," and are still held as of value and importance.

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Dryden's estimation of Shakspere was scarcely an improvement on that of Rymer. He re-cast some of the plays, the idiom of the great poet being, according to Dryden, a little out of use" in his day. In 1707, Tate produced a work entitled "King Lear," which he said he had borrowed from an obscure piece of the same name, recommended to his notice by a friend. And this was the "Lear" of Shakspere! In the "Curiosities of Literature' we are supplied with another example of the non-recognition of the author. Bysshe, says D'Israeli, compiling an Art of Poetry in 1718, passed by in his collection Spenser in the poets of his time, the reason given for the omission being because their language is now become so obsolete. that most readers of our age have no ear for them, and therefore Shakspere himself is so rarely cited in my collection."

During the succeeding age Shakspere fared somewhat better. Pope was a keen if not a very discriminating admirer. He exploded the nonsense uttered by critics like Rymer, and in regard to Shakspere's knowledge of classical antiquity, he staked his own reputation for scholarship by writing as follows in his preface to the works:

"We find him very knowing in the customs, rites, and manners of antiquity. In Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, not only the spirit, but manners of the Romans are exactly drawn ; and still a nicer distinction is shown between the manners of the Romans in the time of the former and of the latter. His reading in the ancient historians is no less conspicuous in many references to particular passages; and the speeches copied from Plutarch in Coriolanus, may, I think, as well be made an instance of his learning as those copied from Cicero in Catiline of Ben Johnson's. The manners of other nations in general, the Egyptians, Venetians, French, &c., are drawn with equal propriety. Whatever object of nature, or branch of science, he either speaks of or describes, it is always with competent, if not extensive knowledge: his descriptions are still exact; all his metaphors appropriated, and remarkably drawn from the true nature and inherent qualities of each subject. When he treats of ethic or politic, we may constantly observe a wonderful justness of distinction as well as extent of comprehension. No one is more a master of the poetical story, or has more frequent allusions to the various parts of it. Mr Waller (who has been celebrated for this last particular) has not shown more learning this way than Shakespear."

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Pope's edition of Shakspere was issued in 1722, and to us it is not a little curious to observe that even at this late date in our literary history, so imperfect seems to have been the popular knowledge of Shakspere, that Pope thought it necessary to mark what he called "the shining passages of his author within inverted commas. The next edition of the works which happens to have come under our observation, is one published in Edinburgh in 1755, and in this we have also abundant proof that Shakspere was still very imperfectly known or appreciated. This issue appears to have been considered a rather desperate literary adventure, for it comes out under the patronage of no less than seven bookselling firms, namely, "W. Sands, Hamilton and Balfour, Kincaid and Donaldson, L. Hunter, J. Yair, W. Gordon, and J. Brown," and in it we find that the editor has preserved the marks for Pope's "shining passages, adding others to indicate the so-called "beauties" discovered by Warburton and Dodd.

As far as concerns the labours of Dr Johnson, it has to be said that the doctor, although occasionally awarding praise most grudgingly, and bestowing censure when that censure was a libel on his own judgment, speaks of his author, cn the whole, in a fair and manly style. But that the doctor was in many respects incompetent to understand Shakspere, is made manifest by his citing of the Rymer above noticed as a critic, no less than by his opinion of the tragedies, which he contrasts with the comedies greatly to the disadvantage of the former class of productions. We do not know that it would be possible to condense into the same compass as much false criticism as the worthy doctor

has put into the following sentences of his Preface to the works-and this, let it be observed, was published one hundred and forty-nine years after Shakspere's death :—

"In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of toil and study what is written at last with little felicity; but in his comic scenes he seeins to produce without labour what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comic, but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his tragic scenes there is always something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct."

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"In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse as his labour is more. The effusions of passion, which exigence forces out, are for the most part striking and energetic; but whenever he solicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, meanness, tediousness, and obscurity."

Voltaire would have nothing to do with a genius so erratic. He stigmatises the tragedies as "monstrous farces," and at the time when Shakspere was becoming better recognised in this country, barbarism and ignorance are attributed by Voltaire to the nation which listens to his plays. One piece of criticism by the great Frenchman is to us of these days perfectly startling. He pronounces the quarrel-scene between Brutus and Cassius to be mean and unsuitable to the situation and characters. Coleridge said of this same scene that not till he had studied it did he become convinced that Shakspere was inspired!

With the great philosopher David Hume the great poet fared no better than he did with the other literary men of his time. In the second volume of the History of England, published in 1754, Hume ventures to write as follows:

"If Shakespeare be considered as a man, born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction, either from the world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy: if represented as a poet, capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of this eulogy. In his compositions we regret that many irregularities, and even absurdities, should so frequently disfigure the animated and passionate scenes intermixed with them; and at the same time we perhaps admire the more those beauties on account of their being surrounded with such deformities. A striking peculiarity of sentiment, adapted to a single character, he frequently hits, as it were, by inspiration; but a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. Nervous and picturesque expressions as well as descriptions abound in him, but it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a defect; yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can more easily excuse than that want of taste which often prevails in his productions, and which gives way only by intervals to irradiations of genius. A great and fertile genius he certainly possessed, and one enriched equally with a tragic and comic vein; but he ought to be cited as a proof how dangerous it is to rely on these advantages alone for

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