re is
to accept on the authority of men who bring to the support of their
decision the unanswerable plea of years spent in the collation and
examination of texts never hitherto explored and compared with such
energy of learned labour. If this be the issue of learning and of
industry, the most indolent and ignorant of readers who retains his
natural capacity to be moved and mastered by the natural delight of
contact with heavenly things is better off by far than the most studious
and strenuous of all scholiasts who ever claimed acquiescence or
challenged dissent on the strength of his lifelong labours and
hard-earned knowledge of the letter of the text. Such an one is indeed
"in a parlous state"; and any boy whose heart first begins to burn within
him, who feels his blood kindle and his spirit dilate, his pulse leap and
his eyes lighten, over a first study of Shakespeare, may say to such a
teacher with better reason than Touchstone said to Corin, "Truly, thou
art damned; like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side." Nor could charity
itself hope much profit for him from the moving appeal and the pious
prayer which temper that severity of sentence--"Wilt thou rest damned?
God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! Thou art raw."
And raw he is like to remain for all his learning, and for all incisions
that can be made in the horny hide of a self-conceit to be pierced by the
puncture of no man's pen. It was bad enough while theorists of this
breed confined themselves to the suggestion of a possible partnership
with Fletcher, a possible interpolation by Jonson; but in the descent
from these to the alleged adulteration of the text by Middleton and
Rowley we have surely sounded the very lowest depth of folly attainable
by the utmost alacrity in sinking which may yet be possible to the
bastard brood of Scriblerus. For my part, I shall not be surprised
though the next discoverer should assure us that half at least of
_Hamlet_ is evidently due to the collaboration of Heywood, while the
greater part of _Othello_ is as clearly assignable to the hand of
Shirley.

Akin to this form of folly, but less pernicious though not more
profitable, is the fancy of inventing some share for Shakespeare in the
composition of plays which the veriest insanity of conjecture or caprice
could not venture to lay wholly to his charge. This fancy, comparatively
harmless as it is, requires no ground of proof to go upon, no prop of
likeli