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432 once weak inventions of a childish fancy, but which in the course of time awaken in us a mournful pity, when they have become weather-beaten and mouldering in earnest, and run into real decay.

The French are, as I have said, little inclined to grasp the spirit of the Shakespearean comedy, and I have found, with one exception only, none among their critics who has even a vague idea of it. Who is this man ? Who is the exception. Gutzkow says that the elephant is the doctrinaire among animals. And just such a reasonable and perfect paragon of a ponderous elephant has most sagaciously grasped the real being of the Shakespeare comedy. Yes, one can hardly believe it, but it is Monsieur Guizot who has best written on those graceful and most mischievously wanton airy images of the modern muse, and hereupon I translate for the amazement and edification of the reader a passage from a work which was published in 1822 by Ladvocat in Paris, and which is called ''De Shakespeare et de la Poésie dramatique, par F. Guizot'': —

"The Shakespearean comedies resemble neither those of Molière, nor of Aristophanes, nor of the Romans. Among the Greeks, and in modern times among the French, comedy was the result of a free but careful study of the real world of life, and the problem, or result, was its represen-