s work be almost
constantly hampered by the framework of other men's enterprises, which
he was so singularly content to develop or improve. Hence the critical
importance of following up the culture which evolved him, and above all,
that which finally touched him to his most memorable performance.

V.

It is to Montaigne, then, that we now come, in terms of our preliminary
statement of evidence. When Florio's translation was published, in 1603,
Shakspere was thirty-seven years old, and he had written or refashioned
KING JOHN, HENRY IV., THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM,
RICHARD II., TWELFTH NIGHT, AS YOU LIKE IT, HENRY V., ROMEO AND JULIET,
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, and JULIUS CAESAR. It is very likely that he
knew Florio, being intimate with Jonson, who was Florio's friend and
admirer; and the translation, long on the stocks, must have been
discussed in his hearing. Hence, presumably, his immediate perusal of
it. Portions of it he may very well have seen or heard of before it was
fully printed (necessarily a long task in the then state of the
handicraft); but in the book itself, we have seen abundant reason to
believe, he read largely in 1603-4.

Having inductively proved the reading, and at the same time the fact of
the impression it made, we may next seek to realise deductively what
kind of impression it was fitted to make. We can readily see what
North's Plutarch could be and was to the sympathetic and
slightly-cultured playwright; it was nothing short of a new world of
human knowledge; a living vision of two great civilisations, giving to
his universe a vista of illustrious realities beside which the charmed
gardens of Renaissance romance and the bustling fields of English
chronicle-history were as pleasant dreams or noisy interludes. He had
done wonders with the chronicles; but in presence of the long
muster-rolls of Greece and Rome he must have felt their insularity; and
he never returned to them in the old spirit. But if Plutarch could do so
much for him, still greater could be the service rendered by Montaigne.
The difference, broadly speaking, is very much as the difference in
philosophic reach between JULIUS CAESAR and HAMLET, between CORIOLANUS
and LEAR.

For what was in its nett significance Montaigne's manifold book, coming
thus suddenly, in a complete and vigorous translation, into English life
and into Shakspere's ken? Simply the most living book then existing in
Europe. Th