Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/367

 than our taste can tolerate, more thin or more fulsome than his grandest tone, whenever occasion summons traits which fit into a deeper consistency than that of style. Then, if the critic of metrical and verbal niceties is not also a human observer, or is too much preoccupied with his theory of the Shakspearean method, he will be apt to disparage some prescriptions of Nature.

It is also a very common procedure to illustrate the excellences of Shakspeare by comparing them with the inferior work of the contemporary dramatists. Either Shakspeare at his best ought to be matched with the other playwrights at their best, or else we ought to concede that his occasional weaknesses, which are like theirs, are not theirs, but his own. It is absurd to keep Shakspeare posturing incessantly in the finest attitude of the several periods of his style. During the Elizabethan age, England's soil stood thick with true poets whose fragrance often makes us suspect that Shakspeare is near. It is dangerous to be too positive upon the matter of sentiment as well as style. Take for an instance this:—

"I am so light At any mischief, there's no villainy But is a tune methinks."

That lightness of heart is Middleton's. It is stray pollen from the garden of Shakspeare. But nothing is fructified: there is no tune in the villainous stuff which precedes and follows.

The wounded sergeant easily justifies his mangled metre and ragged pomposity of style. We should sus