Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/57

 out this comedy require a more careful revision than has yet been given; since if the crudest work of a man of genius is not to be rejected from the list of his writings in which it has once found place, it claims at least so much of editorial care as may leave it in a reasonably legible form.

It appears that in the same year which gave to the press this loose and slipshod effort at a comedy, the most perfect of Chapman's plays, though not published till six years later, was completed for the stage. The admirable comedy of All Fools is the first work which bears full evidence of the vigorous and masculine versatility, the force and freshness of his free and natural genius. The dedication, which seems to have been cancelled almost as soon as issued, gives one of the most singular proofs on record of a poet's proverbial inability to discern between his worse and better work. The writer who ten years before was so loud in his complaint of men's neglect, and so haughty in his claim on their attention for his crudest and faultiest work, now assures the friend to whom he inscribes a poem of real excellence,