carols like a lark, luring the mind with it to ampler spaces and a serener atmosphere. It is no small education for the nobler part of us to consort with one of such temper that he could say of himself with truth, "God intended to prove me, whether I durst take up alone a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst." And it is the breath of this spirit that pours through the "Areopagitica" as through a trumpet, sounding the charge against whatever is base and recreant, whether in the world about us or in the ambush of our own natures.

SHAKESPEARE'S "RICHARD III."

AN ADDRESS READ BEFORE THE EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION.

1883.

AFTER a general introduction, Mr. Lowell said:

I propose to say a few words on one of the plays usually attributed to Shakespeare, - a play in respect of which I find myself in the position of Peter Bell, seeing little more than an ordinary primrose where I ought, perhaps, to see the plant and flower of light; I mean the play of "Richard III." Horace Walpole wrote "Historic Doubts" concerning the monarch himself, and I shall take leave to express some about the authorship of the drama that bears his name. I have no intention of applying to it a system of subjective criticism which I consider as untrustworthy as it is fascinating, and which I think has often been carried beyond its legitimate limits. But I believe it absolutely safe to say of Shakespeare that he never wrote deliberate nonsense, nor was knowingly guilty of defective metre; yet even tests like these I would apply with commendable modesty and hesitating reserve, conscious that the meaning of words, and still more

the associations they call up, have changed since Shakespeare's day; that the accentuation of some was variable, and that Shakespeare's ear may very likely have been as delicate as his other senses. On the latter point, however, I may say in passing, of his versification, which is often used as a test for the period of his plays, that Coleridge, whose sense of harmony and melody was perhaps finer than that of any other modern poet, did not allow his own dramatic verse the same licenses, and I might almost say the same mystifications, which he esteems applicable in regulating or interpreting that of Shakespeare. This is certainly remarkable. For my own part, I am convinced that if we had Shakespeare's plays as he wrote them, — and not as they have come down to us, deformed by the careless hurry of the copiers-out of parts, by the emendations of incompetent actors, and the mishearings of shorthand writers, I am convinced that we should not find from one end of them to the other a demonstrably faulty verse or a passage obscure for any other reason than depth of thought or supersubtlety of phrase.

I know that in saying this I am laying myself open to the reproach of applying common sense to a subject which of all others demands uncommon sense for its adequate treatment, demands perception as sensitive and divination as infallible as the operations of that creative force they attempt to measure are illusive and seemingly abnormal. But in attempting to answer a question like that I have suggested, I should be guided by considera

tions far less narrow. We cannot identify printed thoughts by the same minute comparisons that would serve to convict the handwriting of them. To smell the rose is surely quite otherwise convincing than to number its petals; and in estimating that sum of qualities which we call character, we trust far more to general than to particular impressions. In guessing at the authorship of an anonymous book, like Southey's "Doctor" or Bulwer's "Timon," while I might lay some stress on tricks of manner, I should be much less influenced by the fact that many passages were above or below the ordinary level of any author whom I suspected of writing it than by the fact that there was a single passage different in kind from his habitual tone. A man may surpass himself or fall short of himself, but he cannot change his nature. I would not be understood to mean that common sense is always or universally applicable in criticism, — Dr. Johnson's treatment of "Lycidas" were a convincing instance to the contrary; but I confess I find often more satisfactory guidance in the illuminated and illuminating common sense of a critic like Lessing, making sure of one landmark before he moved forward to the next, than in the metaphysical dark lanterns which some of his successors are in the habit of letting down into their own consciousness by way of enlightening ours. Certainly common sense will never suffice for the understanding or enjoyment of "those brave translunary things that the first poets had;" but it is at least a remarkably good prophylactic against mistaking a handsaw for a hawk.

the authenticity First of all, and

What, then, is the nature of the general considerations which I think we ought to bear in mind in debating a question like this, of one of Shakespeare's plays? last of all, I should put style; not style in its narrow sense of mere verbal expression, for that may change and does change with the growth and training of the man, but in the sense of that something, more or less clearly definable, which is always and everywhere peculiar to the man, and either in kind or degree distinguishes him from all other men,the kind of evidence which, for example, makes us sure that Swift wrote "The Tale of a Tub" and Scott the "Antiquary," because nobody else could have done it. Incessu patuit dea, and there is a kind of gait which marks the mind as well as the body. But even if we took the word "style" in that narrower sense which would confine it to diction and turn of phrase, Shakespeare is equally incomparable. Coleridge, evidently using the word in this sense, tells us: "There's such divinity doth hedge our Shakespeare round that we cannot even imitate his style. I tried to imitate his manner in the 'Remorse,' and when I had done, I found I had been tracking Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger instead. It is really very curious." Greene, in a well-known passage, seems to have accused Shakespeare of plagiarism, and there are verses, sometimes even a succession of verses of Greene himself, of Peele, and especially of Marlowe, which are comparable, so far as externals go, with Shakespeare's own. Nor is this to be wondered at