sign, or deference to literary statute, by the sheer unguided action of innate tendencies and taste. No more laborious student and worker than he was in the days of his middle manhood lived in London; a student in the conception and composition of plays, in adjustment of part to part according to a definite plan, in the revision and criticism of his own work, so that he might present a resultant in which nature and art, invention and execution, had each its place and were mutually helpful.

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6. A word as to the limitations of Shakespeare's genius, the elements of which we have already discussed. Addison in his criticism of Paradise Lost" remarks that he has "seen in the works of a modern philosopher a map of the spots in the sun." So even Shakespeare has his defects, though they may be "the defects of his virtues." It is somewhat surprising, for example, that he ever could have written, the Sonnets excepted, his nondramatic poems, which, as a whole, seldom rise above the veriest commonplace either in thought or structure. In few instances, if any, has Coleridge so forgotten himself as when he assigns to these productions any high order of merit. The titles of these poems" Venus and Adonis," "The" Rape of Lucrece," "A Lover's Complaint," and

"The Passionate Pilgrim "-indicate their character as not only cynical but sensuous, even verging close to the line of error in æsthetic art and not infrequently crossing it. It would be difficult to find any considerable number of stanzas in them that remind us even indirectly of Shakespeare. Here and there we find a line or couplet indicative of the master, some of the most notable lines being justly assigned to Marlowe. It is in these poems that the charge of euphuism, or overwrought sentiment and expression, finds its fullest justification. It is to this that Hazlitt alludes as he speaks of Shakespeare's use of "all the technicalities of art ... where words have been made a substitute for things." So Dowden remarks, in writing of "Venus and Adonis," that Shakespeare's endeavor was "to invent elaborate speeches in that style of high-wrought fantasy which was the fashion of the time." It is to this euphuistic feature that Jonson refers when he wishes that Shakespeare "had blotted a thousand lines" from the completed text of his plays. "I am ready to grant," writes Lowell," that Shakespeare is sometimes tempted away from the natural by the quaint; that he sometimes forces a partial, even a verbal, analogy between the abstract thought and the sensual image into

an absolute identity." Frequent reference has justly been made to the presence of this error in the character of Shakespeare as a wit, when, leaving the safer and more natural province of humor, he plays upon words and fanciful resemblances so as to direct attention from the thought to the mode. of stating it. In these lighter poems of mere sentiment the temptations to such forced conceits are too potent to be resisted. Nor is the error confined to the non-dramatic poems. When we are told by White that "Titus Andronicus" is a "tragedy filled with bombastic language," that "Love's Labour's Lost" is" an almost boyish production," that "The Two Gentlemen of Verona " shows that the "poet had not freed himself from the influence of the prose romances of his early days," special reference is made to this sin of diffuseness with all its attendant evils. The greatest of minds, however, are at times off their guard, and at times purposely below their best selves, so that, all errors conceded at this point, justice demands that Shakespeare be judged rather by his own protests against euphuism and his incisive. caricature of it than by occasional fault in this direction. Even where at times he seems to be purposely euphuistic, a closer examination reveals

the fact that he is acting in the rôle of an impersonator of character, hoping, in this indirect manner, the better to expose and condemn a current Elizabethan error.

77. Hence we turn with renewed interest to a final topic Shakespeare's pervasive presence in Modern English literature. The statement has been made respecting Emerson and the Emersonian influence has become a substantive part of American literature. The same remark may be made as to Shakespeare's personality in English letters. It is a pervasive presence, a sort of pananthropism in our literary product. Read where we will, we see it in prose and verse, in epic and drama and lyric, in mind and art, in English civilization and social history. English poetry, especially, is thoroughly Shakespeareanized. The forms or evidences of this presence are varied. We see it first of all in the extended number of quotable passages that have been taken from his works. From other poets we select here and there and at length come to the limit of our choice. In Shakespeare, however, we come to no end. Passage follows passage, each appearing more apt and forcible than the preceding. Some of his plays are adducible almost in their entirety, the exception being

as to the portions that may not bear citation. Volumes of extracts are thus to be found in our libraries, while the way in which the body of English literature is interspersed with these passages is quite phenomenal. A further testimony to this presence is seen in the fact that the best of authors have their place and prime, and the reason of their decadence forms a part of our literary study. Shakespeare is growing younger as the centuries pass and students are now vying with each other as never before to present his work in all possible forms for popular and educational purposes. The question of the regeneration of the modern stage. is before the modern public, and after various theories have been broached the critics are coming back to the only tenable one the reinstatement of the Shakespearean drama, and in ever-fuller form, that the twentieth century may learn from the sixteenth to what a high function dramatic composition may rise. No higher tribute than this could be paid to this master of masters. In the classification of our English poets Shakespeare must be allowed to stand alone. There is none like him or

approximately like him.

The fact is that as an

interpreter of human life Shakespeare meets so

general and profound a need that it is inconceiv