Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/163

 whose hearts are worthy to hold and to hoard up such treasure.

Where nothing at once new and true can be said, it is always best to say nothing; as it is in this case to refrain from all reiteration of rhapsody which must have been somewhat "mouldy ere" any living man's "grandsires had nails on their toes," if not at that yet remoter date "when King Pepin of France was a little boy" and "Queen Guinever of Britain was a little wench." In the Merchant of Venice, at all events, there is hardly a single character from Portia to old Gobbo, a single incident from the exaction of Shylock's bond to the computation of hairs in Launcelot's beard and Dobbin's tail, which has not been more plentifully beprosed than ever Rosalind was berhymed. Much wordy wind has also been wasted on comparison of Shakespeare's Jew with Marlowe's; that is, of a living subject for terror and pity with a mere mouthpiece for the utterance of poetry as magnificent as any but the best of Shakespeare's.

Nor can it well be worth any man's while to say or to hear for the thousandth time that As You Like It would be one of those works which prove, as Landor said long since, the falsehood of the stale axiom that no work of man's can be perfect, were