of ear, by hairiness of ear, or by
thickness of ear, but by delicacy of ear alone, I should as soon have
thought of measuring my own poor human organs against those of the
patriarch or leader of the herd as of questioning his indisputable right
to lay down the law to all who agree with his great fundamental
theorem--that the longest ear is the most competent to judge of metre.
_Habemus confitentem asinum_.

{266} A Latin pun, or rather a punning Latinism, not altogether out of
Shakespeare's earliest line. But see the note preceding this one.

{269} The simple substitution of the word "is" for the word "and" would
rectify the grammar here--were that worth while.

{270} Qu. So there is but one France, etc.?

{271} Non-Shakespearean.

{273} I choose for a parallel Shakespeare's use of Plutarch in the
composition of his Roman plays rather than his use of Hall and Holinshed
in the composition of his English histories, because Froissart is a model
more properly to be set against Plutarch than against Holinshed or Hall.

{278} This brilliant idea has since been borrowed from the Chairman--and
that without acknowledgment--by one of those worthies whose mission it is
to make manifest that no burlesque invention of mere man's device can
improve upon the inexhaustible capacities of Nature as shown in the
production and perfection of the type irreverently described by Dryden as
'God Almighty's fool.'

{279} This word was incomprehensibly misprinted in the first issue of
the Society's Report, where it appeared as "foulness." To prevent
misapprehension, the whole staff of printers was at once discharged.

{291} When the learned member made use of this remarkable phrase he
probably had in his mind the suggestive query of Agnes, _si les enfants
qu'on fait se faisaient pas l'oreille_? But the flower of rhetoric here
gathered was beyond the reach of Arnolphe's innocent ward. The
procreation in such a case is even more difficult for fancy to realise
than the conception.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE***

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