The moment, in truth, we take up the story of the settlement of Shakespeare's text, we are entering into a region of peculiarly embittered controversy. The odium philologicum has always worthily maintained its place alongside of the odium theologicum as a grand fomenter of the evil passions which assail the human heart. Perhaps, indeed, unsoundness on a point of etymology or syntax may be rightly deemed by the judicious to betoken on the whole a profounder depth of depravity than unsoundness on a point of doctrine or church discipline. At all events, I doubt if in the house occupied by the odium philologicum there is a mansion roomier and fouler than that given up to the odium Shakespeareaпит. Jealousies have been awakened by it and longcontinued friendships broken; unfounded calumnies have been spread abroad which have never ceased to follow their unhappy victim; and the course of its whole history is strewn with the wrecks of reputations which, when not wrought by personal wrongdoing, have been occasioned by revenge, envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness.

Of these quarrels of Shakespeare's commentators and critics it has always been the correct thing to express disapprobation, when it has not been the object to satirize. Speaking for myself, I am far from looking upon them as the unmixed evil which it is the fashion to regard them as being. Critics and commentators, indeed, would rarely be selected as constituting the ideal of a happy family. It is not from such a nest of hornets that one expects to gather honey. But if sweetness does not come from that quarter, penetration

frequently does. Few, in truth, appreciate the incalculable services which have been wrought by wrath in behalf of the advancement of learning. Love of an author will do much to promote inquiry and stimulate research; but in the case of no commentator will it ever operate with its fullest efficiency save when it is reinforced by a hearty hatred of another commentator, and a hearty contempt for the ridiculous opinions which he has seen fit to express. As little in the mental as in the material world can light exist without heat. At least this has been true of the past; and there seems little reason to think that it will be otherwise in the immediate future. When in the physical world some instrumentality shall have been devised which will illuminate and at the same time not burn, then we may have faith that in the intellectual and spiritual worlds men will learn to perform not merely the comparatively easy duty of loving their enemies, but the much harder task of bearing patiently with and even forgiving the imbecility which puts an interpretation upon an author's words and ideas entirely different from their own.

On this very point one announcement it is desirable to make. In no volume of this series shall I attempt to carry the account of these controversies down later than the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is a natural termination. No sharp dividing line exists, it is true, between periods in which belief in one thing ceases and belief in another begins. But with the close of the eighteenth century the old faith and the old assertions about Shakespeare's dramatic art may be said, in a general way,

the new and now reigning faith came in. A statement not essentially dissimilar may be made in regard to the history of the text. In respect to its treatment there is a marked contrast between the general critical attitude of the two centuries. The general critical attitude, I say; for in both there are particular exceptions. But with this limitation it is correct to state that with the eighteenth century disappeared the violent treatment to which the language and versification of Shakespeare had been subjected; the calm assumption of editors that the transmitted text was a sort of dead substance, upon which they could operate at will, adding to it or rejecting from it or cutting it up in any way that suited their own pleasure. Such practices, to be sure, continue still; but they no longer continue to be looked upon with respect, still less with approval.

A specific statement I may be permitted to make in regard to my own treatment of certain phases of the subject. I have studiously refrained from resorting to comparisons between Shakespeare and the great dramatists of other nations, whether of ancient or modern times, so far as the degree of their achievement is concerned. In the history of opinion there is naturally frequent occasion to recount utterances of such a nature made by others. But comparisons of this sort, even when coming from men of highest genius, seem to me, as a general rule, to belong to criticism of a peculiarly valueless type. The cases are extraordinarily few in which they can be considered at all adequate; for the knowledge possessed by any one man of two contrasted authors is rarely equal as regards both, nor are

the conditions the same which give him the means and

capacity to appreciate each fully. comparisons almost always reflect

Furthermore, such national prejudices

when they do not personal tastes. Something of the same reticence I have observed in the discussion of the different methods employed by different dramatists, though this is a matter which falls legitimately within the province of the work, and is indeed essential to its completeness. No one, in fact, can write a treatise of this kind without having very definite opinions of his own upon the questions in dispute. It is right to give them, for they indicate to the reader the author's point of view. Still the expression of them here is incidental, not specifically designed. This is to say that the work is primarily a history of critical controversy, and not itself a critical estimate.

One further remark. The separate volumes of this series are intended to form complete works in themselves, so far as the particular subject is concerned. To all of them belongs the unity of a common interest; but each of them will constitute a treatise entirely independent of the others. The next volume to appear will have for its title "Shakespeare and Voltaire."