ents since: to
the non-mechanical theory of man--that he is in contact with a moral
order on a different plane from the [160] mechanical order--thousands,
of the most various types and degrees of intellectual power, always
adhere; a fact worth the consideration of all ingenuous thinkers, if
(as is certainly the case with colour, music, number, for instance)
there may be whole regions of fact, the recognition of which belongs to
one and not to another, which people may possess in various degrees;
for the knowledge of which, therefore, one person is dependent upon
another; and in relation to which the appropriate means of cognition
must lie among the elements of what we call individual temperament, so
that what looks like a pre-judgment may be really a legitimate
apprehension. "Men are what they are," and are not wholly at the mercy
of formal conclusions from their formally limited premises. Browne
passes his whole life in observation and inquiry: he is a genuine
investigator, with every opportunity: the mind of the age all around
him seems passively yielding to an almost foregone intellectual result,
to a philosophy of disillusion. But he thinks all that a prejudice;
and not from any want of intellectual power certainly, but from some
inward consideration, some afterthought, from the antecedent
gravitation of his own general character--or, will you say? from that
unprecipitated infusion of fallacy in him--he fails to draw, unlike
almost all the rest of the world, the conclusion ready to hand.

1886.

NOTES

144. +In the original, this quotation, like several above it, is not
indented; it is in smaller type. Return.

"LOVE'S LABOURS LOST"

[161] Love's Labours Lost is one of the earliest of Shakespeare's
dramas, and has many of the peculiarities of his poems, which are also
the work of his earlier life. The opening speech of the king on the
immortality of fame--on the triumph of fame over death--and the nobler
parts of Biron, display something of the monumental style of
Shakespeare's Sonnets, and are not without their concerts of thought
and expression. This connexion of Love's Labours Lost with
Shakespeare's poems is further enforced by the actual insertion in it
of three sonnets and a faultless song; which, in accordance with his
practice in other plays, are inwoven into the argument of the piece
and, like the golden ornaments of a fair woman, give it a peculiar air
of distinction. There is merriment in