thing more than guess-work in your conclusions, and, you suspected,
in the more pretentious opinions of others. You take up, however, the
lectures of Hudson or the charming study of Dowden, and you find that
criticism is becoming, not merely an art, depending on certain instincts
and tastes, but a science, building slowly a well-settled body of laws and
rules, and shaping already a well defined consensus of judgment. The
growth of the English language and literature, the characteristics of
society, of language and of literature in the Elizabethan era, the idioms
of Shakespeare's contemporaries, the manner of Shakespeare himself, in his
different periods, have all been so minutely studied as to form a distinct
specialty in knowledge. The Shakespearian scholar is a well differentiated
species of the genus scholar, and speaks with a substantial authority upon
what is now a real science. You can follow this teacher into Shakespeare's
work-shop, watch the building of his plays, distinguish the hands which
toiled over them and mark their journeyman's work, till quite sure where
the Master's own inimitable touch caressed them into noble form, and in
what period of his life he thus wrought. There is a new revelation of
Shakespeare to our age.

This criticism turned upon the great books of the ancients. Niebuhr led
the way in reconstructing the early history of the Romans. Dr. Arnold
predicted that a Niebuhr of Jewish literature would arise. He came duly.
His name was Ewald. Successors have followed in abundance. The principles
and processes of literary criticism were applied to the Hebrew writings.

In the present immature stage of this science of Biblical Criticism there
are, of course, plenty of speculations and guesses, of hasty
generalizations and crude opinions. Time will correct these. Meanwhile
there is already so much that may claim to be well established as to
constitute a new knowledge of these old books.

The historical books are seen to be the work of many hands in many ages.
They gather up the popular traditions of the race, carry down on their
slow streams fragments from such far back ages that we have almost lost
the clue to their story--glacial boulders that now lie strangely out of
place in the rich fields of later eras; songs of rude periods, nature
myths, legends of semi-fabulous heroes, folk lore of the tribes, scraps
from long-forgotten books, entries from ancient annals, pages torn from
the histories of o