pted for the stage," he wrote chronicle plays, comedies,
romances, tragedies, after others had worked in the same fields.

Milton was born in 1608. "That was the year," says Professor Wendell,
"when Shakspere probably came to the end of his tragic period, and, with
the imitativeness which never forsook him, was about to follow the newly
popular manner of Beaumont and Fletcher."

But let us turn to Professor Wendell's opinion of Milton and quote his
language: "With Milton, the case is wonderfully different. Read
Scripture, if you will, and then turn to your 'Paradise Lost.' Turn then
to whatever poet you chance to love of Greek antiquity or of Roman. Turn
to Dante himself.... Then turn back to Milton. Different you will find
him, no doubt, in the austere isolation of his masterful and deliberate
Puritanism and learning; but that difference does not make him
irrevocably lesser. Rather you will grow more and more to feel how
wonderful his power proves. Almost alone among poets, he could take the
things for which he had need from the masters themselves, as confidently
as any of the masters had taken such matters from lesser men; and he
could so place these spoils of masterpieces in his own work that they
seem as truly and as admirably part of it as they seemed of the other
great works where he found them." "'Paradise Lost' transcends all traces
of its lesser origins, until those lesser origins become a matter of
mere curiosity."

And so it appears that Professer Wendell applies one definition of the
word "imitation" to Shakspere, another to Milton. If Shakspere found
chronicle plays in the theatre, and transformed them into the most vivid
and truthful history ever written, "those lesser origins become a matter
of mere curiosity," and the charge of imitation fails. If the "Comedy of
Errors" is an "imitation" of Plautus, "Paradise Lost" is an "imitation"
of Moses. If "Paradise Lost" is not an "imitation" but "something
utterly apart," "something almost superhuman ... in its grand solitude";
if Milton has "so placed the spoils of masterpieces in his own work that
they seem truly and admirably a part of it," then "Love's Labour's Lost"
is not an "imitation" of Lilly, nor "Henry VI." of Greene or Peele or
Marlowe, nor "Titus Andronicus" of Kyd.

But this indictment against Shakspere is made more definite in form, and
may therefore be more conclusively answered. This is the charge as
stated by Professor Wendell:

"A young Am