comedian? The phrase seems to carry us back to preThespian days, when a corps dramatique consisted of one. We do not think it could mean 66 a fool." Besides, we happen to know the name of King James's fool, and it was not Fletcher. We do not think Knight's argument decisive, far from it; but really, as Shakespearian arguments go, it is not so bad.

Dr. Elze may be said to add something to the probability of Shakespeare's having visited Italy. It is indeed difficult to believe that the poet never himself saw those fair blue skies beneath which so many of his creations move as beneath their native and proper canopy. The very air of Italy seems blowing through so many of his scenes. Does any non-Italian work transport us into the bright, careless, star-clear South, as the last act of The Merchant of Venice transports us? The most striking fresh suggestions Dr. Elze makes, relate to the mention of Julio Romano in The Winter's Tale :

"To the question why he should have selected this artist before all others, some critics might be inclined to answer that he picked up the name at random, if we may use the expression. But such an answer would be quite unsatisfactory, in the face of the fact that the poet most correctly estimates Romano's merits as an artist, and praises him not only in eloquent but the most appropriate words." Dr. Elze's answer is "that he obtained his knowledge of Romano's works by personal inspection." The Palazzo del T in Mantua, built by Romano, and filled with his paintings and drawings, was one of the wonders of the age. But Shakespeare makes him a sculptor! Here Dr. Elze's answer is really notable. It is given by the quotation of two epitaphs found in Vasari.

"Tres artes! Corpora sculpta!" exclaims Dr. Elze, with pardonable exultation. "It is true that Vasari makes nc further mention of Romano's sculptures, neither do his German translators, nor, as far as we know, any recent art-historian, say a word about them. But Shakespeare is nevertheless right; he has made no blunder; he has not abused the poetical licence by introducing Romano as a sculptor. And more than this, his praise of Romano wonderfully agrees with the epitaph in which truth to nature and life is likewise praised as being Julio's chief excellence (if he could put breath into his work-' videbat Jupiter corpora spirare'). Is this chance?"

Dr. Elze's conclusion is that Shakespeare had been at Mantua, and had there seen Romano's works, and read his epitaphs. As we have said, we think he has, by this and other considerations, certainly increased the probability of the Italian travels.

Our readers may by this time be able to judge for themselves of the possible profit to be derived from the volume before us. We will only now, in conclusion, briefly mention what seems to us Dr. Elze's chief deficiency, and his chief misapprehension.

He seems unable to appreciate adequately the importance of the consideration of style-we use the term in its most comprehensive sense-in deciding or discussing Shakespearian

chronology, and other Shakespearian questions. We submit, for instance, that no critic duly competent in this respect, would dream of assigning The Tempest to about the same date as King Lear. It is in this respect that German criticism has so often failed disastrously. How else could Schlegel and other countrymen of his give such remarkable verdicts on what we English call, and persist in calling, the "spurious plays?" Think of this dictum of Schlegel's : Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle (First Part), A Yorkshire Tragedy, "are not only unquestionably Shakespeare's, but in my opinion, they deserve to be classed among his best and maturest works!"

Again, Dr. Elze, in our opinion, lays a great deal too much stress on Shakespeare's early maturity. The facts, all that are well substantiated, do not make for this view; but Dr. Elze will have it so. What encourages him is what may be called comparative biography. He is always ready with a list of achievements performed at an early age-Raphael's painting the Sposalizio in his twenty-first year, the Entombment, in the Borghese Gallery, and the Belle Jardinière, in his twenty-fourth, and beginning the Stanze in his twenty-fifth; Mozart's composing his Mithridates in his fourteenth year, his Idomeneo in his twentyfifth, his Entführung aus dem Serail in his twenty-sixth. But, putting aside the questions of antecedents-the question whether Shakespeare's early advantages equalled those enjoyed by other great spirits-comparative biography tells also a quite different tale. It tells us of great geniuses who were slow in putting forth fruit. In England, for instance, Dryden, Richardson, Scott all ripened slowly. If all these three men had died even when they were upwards of forty, their names would well-nigh have passed away with them; at the best, but a dim glory would have been theirs. Of

Shakespeare, we know for certain that he wrote his Rape of Lucrece in 1593 and the following year. We know it for certain, because, dedicating Venus and Adonis to the Earl of Southampton, in 1593, and apologizing for his “unpolished lines," he vows "to take advantage of all idle hours till I have honoured you with some graver labour." And, in 1594, the Rape of Lucrece-" the graver labour promised "appears, dedicated, of course, to the same nobleman. We have, then, a sure representative of Shakespeare's development in 1593-4, when he was just thirty years old. Now, what does it show us? Not the great playwright, but the great poet, in the full lavish enjoyment of a yet unpruned exuberant youthful fancy, his powers not yet reduced to obey dramatic restraints, the greatest heir of the world, filled with the delighted consciousness of his magnificent dower, but not yet wholly submitting himself to artistic discipline and economy.

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VIII.

SOME CONDITIONS

OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA.

(From the Saturday Review for July 31, 1875.)

QUESTION debated in many minds just now is the possible revival of the drama. When one of the chief poets of the day, who has previously written nothing of the kind, appears as a playwright, hope naturally awakes. Such was the brilliancy of our Elizabethan era that we can never cease to be dazzled by it—never cease to think of it as the golden age of our literature, and, therefore, as an age, the forms and modes of which are always'to be aspired after.. It is true that since those palmy days the decline and fall of our drama has been steady and complete; but yet we cannot help hoping it may rise again. We cannot reconcile ourselves to the extinction of the glory of our literature. We know that there are "flaming ministers," whose former light can be restored, and we are eager to believe this to be one of them. And yet for that "cunning'st pattern of excelling nature," as we may well call the Elizabethan drama, when its flame is put out, who knows "where is that Promethean heat that can" its "light relume"?

It may be worth while considering for a moment two of the conditions under which our drama throve so splendidly at the close of the sixteenth century. Let us notice, first, the active intellectuality of the Elizabethan age; and, secondly, that it was not a time when books were abundant,

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