Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/19

Rh character in other moments. The more impossible an explanation, the greater will be the wonder. Some commentators, again, have displayed their affection by dwelling upon his proverbial 'gentleness,' till he seems to be a kind of milksop with no more of the devil in him than there was in the poet of The Christian Year. Others have been so impressed by the vigour of his fine frenzies, and the 'irregularities' of which our forefathers complained, that they describe him as always on the border of insanity. Such discords do not prove necessarily that the man was unknowable, but certainly suggest that to know him a critic must keep his head and be less anxious to exhibit his own enthusiasm and geniality than to form a tolerably sane judgment. The application of sound methods happily seems to be spreading, and may lead to more solid results.

Some objections, indeed, if they could be sustained, would make the investigation impossible from the first. Shakespeare, we are reminded with undeniable truth, was a dramatist. We cannot assume that he is responsible for the opinions which he formulates. It is Orsino, not his creator, who holds that wives should be younger than their husbands, and Shakespeare