yments, vocations ... and that, great as he was, and
oceanic as was his genius, we can read him all the better
because he was, after all, a man...." In recognising the
good sense of Mr. Morgan's general attitude, I must not be
understood to endorse his rejection of the "metrical tests"
of Mr. Fleay and other English critics. These seem to me to
be about the most important English contribution to the
scientific comprehension of Shakspere. On the other hand, it
may be said that the naturalistic conception of Shakspere as
an organism in an environment was first closely approached
in the present century by French critics, as Guizot and
Chasles (Taine's picture of the Elizabethan theatre, adopted
by Green, having been founded on a study by Chasles); that
the naturalistic comprehension of _Hamlet_, as an incoherent
whole resulting from the putting of new cloth into an old
garment, was first reached by the German Ruemelin (_Shakspere
Studien_); and that the structural anomalies of _Hamlet_ as
an acting play were first clearly put by the German Benedix
(_Die Shakspereomanie_) these two critics thus making amends
for much vain discussion of _Hamlet_ by their countrymen
before and since; while the naturalistic conception of the
man Shakspere is being best developed at present in America.
The admirable work of Messrs. Clarke and Wright and Fleay in
the analysis of the text and the revelation of its
non-Shaksperean elements, seems to make little impression on
English culture; while such a luminous manual as Mr. Barrett
Wendell's _William Shakspere: a Study in Elizabethan
Literature_ (New York, 1894), with its freshness of outlook
and appreciation, points to decided progress in rational
Shakspere-study in the States, though, like the _Shakspere
Primer_ of Professor Dowden, it is not consistently
scientific throughout.

[142] _Life of Shakspere_, 1886, p. 128.

[143] See Mr. Appleton Morgan's _Shakspere's Venus and
Adonis: a Study in Warwickshire Dialect_.

[144] Professor Dowden notes in his _Shakspere Primer_ (p.
12) that before 1600 the prices paid for plays, by Henslowe,
the theatrical lessee, vary from L4 to L8, and not till
later did it rise as high as L20 for a play by a popular
dramatist.

[145] Compare the 78th Sonnet, which ends;--

But thou art all my art, and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance.

[146] _Lif