country-men knew and liked so well. Nor need we fail to see that if he did mould it, as an epic poet would, to the models of Italy, he could not but be an Englishman and an Elizabethan. And it is also clear that the Alexandrine at the end of the immortal stanza, which, as Monsieur Jusserand and others have said reasonably, is least appropriate in a long epio, because it is a barrier to the easy progress of the reader, is in itself a formal confession of the unfused and undisciplined character of the poem. Yet we must admire the discipline as well as the music of the stanza when we meet it in our anthologies, or take it in disjointed passages, as Englishmen will. There is no more fascinating task than to discover how poetry then caught so nicely the changing colours of an age as individual as any in the records of literature. This is the problem which presents itself at every century, though with varying degrees of directness-else the literary history of a people is merely an oldfashioned history of literature. It is the problem in Spenser, for, apart from the technical interest to the poets who have dubbed him their poet, he is great only to the anthologists and the historical critics, not to those who must be touched and stirred by a philosophy of life. It is something to have all the poets; and the anthologists and historical oritics. The philosophers may come when they desire holiday.

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With Shakespeare our practice has been somewhat different. ferent. We have squabbled so over his life, his plagiarisms, his collaboration, his very identity, that criticism, while allowing, though not always appreciating, his sheer imaginative glory, has yet kept one foot on earth. He may have better Bowers of Bliss; he may be the very Spirit of Poetry and the Wizard of the Soul; yet he must reckon with bibliographers, penny critics, and local historians as no other man shall. Hence it is that in every discourse on the poet there is a predisposition to study him in his milieu, to relate him to the intellectual life of his age. Somehow, this double attitude of the critics is tolerable in the case of the very great ones. It is when we come to the second and third degrees of reputation that the critical subtleties on contemporary influences are more provoking and appear to assume an undue importance. Yet we should convince ourselves that a method which is possible (shall we say necessary?) in the case of the highest literary genius is as adaptable in all

other cases. No hurt can be done to any writer or to the sacred beliefs of any reader, if it be performed carefully, and sanely, as we gladly acknowledge has been done in this volume. In this suggestive portion of the work, which we hope Monsieur Jusserand will publish separately for the general good of Shakespearian study, he is with the most ar

dent of us in admiration of the poet; and he enhances rather than diminishes Shakespeare's greatness by his analysis. Commentators such as Gervinus have but darkened counsel. "One of the qualities," says Monsieur Jusserand, "which Shakespeare received from nature dominates all others, and explains how, despite the changes of time, of school, and of literary ideal, despite the presence of huge faults (he did nothing by halves), his fame has gone on increasing in every country. That faculty which, in the general, is the rarest, appears in him pre-eminent: he is more than any poet of any time the life-giver (distributeur de vie)." The highest praiseand best proved, notwithstanding the "faults," by the poet's treatment of the material which lay to hand. Critics have so exalted the hoary saw of Mr Opie that they almost believe that every fine canvas is painted with brains. Let us not forget the colours.

Readers of Taine's History will call to mind his ugsome picture of the habits and tastes of Shakespeare's audience. It was a tempting opportunity for "artistic" exaggeration; but he laid on too much vermilion and bilious yellow. We must not overdo the " "blood" and "noise" of this rough emotional rabble, and forget the "sentiment," the "patriotism,' the "spontaneity and fantasy." Monsieur Jusserand by no means makes a Dutch garden of all this, but he brings some order into the wilderness-else

it would be hard, with full allowance for genius as well as for "huge faults," to maintain the thesis that Shakespeare's master was the populace. Even the "bad taste" which has been a favourite topic of French essayists since Voltaire takes a new complexion when translated to its true historical surroundings. "What we call bad taste, the English crowd then, as one knows, called spirit. It could appreciate the true spirit of which the Shakesperian pieces are full, but the false had also its charm for them." Here we have at once the difference between Taine's ruffian mob and our author's Elizabethan crowd: and here is some explanation of the things which the aesthetic critic must regretfully admit to be the blemishes of greatness.

We cannot follow out the details of Monsieur Jusserand's excellent statement of the practical side of Shakespeare's muse, or note how many of the ordinary difficulties of Shakesperian study are resolved by the menstruum here provided. It is borne in upon us, as we trace the argument, that, while we better understand Shakespeare as an expression of the general literary ideas of his age, we have gained, not lost, in sensitiveness to the individual appeal of his genius. This argument has never been stated with greater sanity, in the rillets as in the main channel of the discourse; and nowhere more clearly than in the section on the Sonnets. There, to borrow

his own metaphor, Monsieur Jusserand throws open to the cool air. It is a relief to escape from the stifling speculations of the friends of "Mr W. H."

As in these portions on Spenser and Shakespeare, so elsewhere-on More, on Hooker, on Burton; on Humanism in England, on the Picaresque Novel; on other things-Monsieur Jusserand brings the same intimate knowledge of our literature and the same happy turn of exposition. To call a book on this grand scale "lively" were indecorous, yet the author, well knowing, with others of his countrymen, that a book which is not readable will not be read, has with no suspicion of effort added the grace of wit to the accomplishments of learning and judgment.

When, in his account of the

Anatomy of Melancholy,' he refers to one of Burton's cures for the disease, the shows and feasting at the arrival of an ambassador, he gently adds, "Since the time of Burton that custom has fallen away, and it may be that to this fact we must attribute the melancholy of our own times." But when ambassadors, in turn, take to providing entertainment on this scale, we shall surely recover our spirits. In the same 66 member of that unfathomable book, Burton has observed that some foolish people are like "our modern Frenchmen, that rather lose pound of blood in a single combat than a drop of sweat in any honest labour." What of this very honest labour, Democritus Junior?

G. GREGORY SMITH.

Boy having had, it is to be hoped, the best possible done for him at home in the way of preparation, is now launched into school. There it will in the long-run be found to be the kindest as well as the wisest policy to leave him alone and let him gradually find his own level among boys, and make his own terms with those "beasts "the masters. Possibly or probably, neither the one class nor the other-schoolfellow, that is, or teacher-will discover in the neophyte quite all those merits and excellences that have been attributed to him in the home-circle.

"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona. Be the child ever so precocious, so facetious, or so well-mannered, he is only one out of some hundreds who have arrived at the dignity of tall hat and Eton jacket under precisely similar circumstances and with precisely similar reputations. Believe me, dear lady, your jewel is only in the rough at present, and it may be that it will suffer either in reality or imagination a good many pangs while the polishing and cutting processes are going on. Harden your heart, then, to leave it without undue interference in the hands of the polishers, and remember that, if Boy whimpers, or cries out, or tells you that he is miserably unhappy under the novel treatment, as in a visit to the dentist, you have to look ahead for comfort. It is to yourself rather than to your boy that

all my sympathy goes out, the more especially so if it chances that the little fellow you have just left at school is the only boy, or, worse still, the only child you have. You must not attempt to gauge his feeling at the school, full of companionship and young vitality, by your own in the empty house. Rather picture him to yourself as enjoying, for the first time perhaps in his life, the "joy of battle”. there is no allusion here to fisticuffs-in the schoolroom as well as in the playground with rivals of his own age. Do not take too seriously to heart the dolorous brief epistles of the first few days, or rush hastily to the conclusion that the "other little boys at that school" are savage young monsters and the masters brutal and and unsympathetic tyrants. Nine out of ten among those small home-sick specimens who consume time and paper and ink their fingers in harrowing the maternal heart by dilating on the miseries of those early school-days will probably harrow it the other way later on by declaring that "it is beastly dull at home with nothing but women to play with and talk to." I had always thought that a certain old cochin hen, whose brood of half-grown ducklings had revolted en masse and colonised a small dirty island in the centre of a pond, was the unhappiest creature in the world, until I saw a fond mother pay her first visit to

her only boy at school. In the early days of the term young hopeful had burdened the postman with a more than ordinary amount of lugubrious epistles and heart-breaking entreaties for an immediate visit. But by request the visit had been deferred till such a time as the boy might be expected to have "shaken down properly," and when in due course it did come off, it could only be described as a melancholy fiasco. For the "shaking down" had been so entirely successful that absolute enjoyment of the time being had taken the place of melancholy depression, and cricket with Brown, Jones, and Robinson offered far more attractions to the young Epicurean than a tête-à-tête with his mother.

"May he come and see me off at the station?" inquired the lady as she prepared to take her departure, but the young gentleman at once put in a disclaimer

"I shall miss my innings if I do."

"Heartless little monster!" some one may exclaim.

But- "It's natur'; ain't it, cook?" as said that great philosopher Samuel Weller when the pretty housemaid affected to be coy on his proposal to kiss her by deputy. Boy's nature it is certainly, and therefore neither be unreasonably depressed, dear lady, by the constantly recurring chapters of lamentations in the initial weeks, nor yet be sorrowfully surprised if the letters later on be few, far between, and of the laconic order. The misery that prompts the former

is of a very evanescent type; deplorable, perhaps, yet not altogether unnatural the careless neglect that omits the once frequent correspondence. Learn to believe that in Boy's case no news must be taken for good news, and do not wear out your life by conjuring up for yourself vain imaginations of disasters. You would surely prefer that your darling should be enjoying himself with his boon companions out of doors rather than writing tales of woe to you in the deserted schoolroom.

"Little boys," wrote Thackeray, "who ory when they are going to school, cry because they are going to a very uncomfortable place. It is only a very few who weep from sheer affection." The wisest thing recorded of that sweettempered but not very wise lady, Amelia Osborne, in 'Vanity Fair,' is her acceptance, if not with complacency at any rate with patient resignation, of the fact that it is a part and parcel of a healthy - minded boy's nature to be happiest in other boys' society. Yet I will not say that the character of Master George will commend itself to many of us, and I have no hesitation in registering my opinion that there is something wanting in the character of any boy who cannot give up an occasional hour in the week to his home-letters.

Be not again disappointed or dismayed, Cornelia, if your jewel is not viewed by its new approvers through precisely the same pair of spectacles as that through which you yourself have been in the habit of re