Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/135

 genius. It should be superfluous and impertinent to explain that the expression is not to be considered apart from the substance; but while men who do not know this are suffered to utter as with the authority of a pedagogue or a pulpiteer the verdict of gerundgrinders and metremongers on the finest and most intricate questions of the subtlest and most sublime of arts, it is but too evident that the explanation of even so simple and radical a truth can be neither impertinent nor superfluous. It is not because a particular pronoun or conjunction is used in this play some fifty times oftener than in any other work of its author, a point on which I profess myself neither competent nor careful to pronounce, that I am prepared to decide on the question of its authenticity or its age. That question indeed I am diffident enough to regard as one impossible to resolve. That it is the work of Chapman I see no definite reason to disbelieve, and not a little reason to suppose that it may be. The selection and treatment of the subject recall the trick of his fancy and the habit of his hand; the process of the story is in parts quaint and bloody, galvanic and