ion of handiwork, but through pure
incompetence to do better. The blame of the failure, the shame of the
shortcoming, cannot be laid to the account of any momentary excess or
default in emotion, of passing exhaustion or excitement, of intermittent
impulse and reaction; it is an indication of lifelong and irremediable
impotence. And it is further to be noted that by far the least
unsuccessful parts of the play are also by far the most unimportant. The
capacity of the author seems to shrink and swell alternately, to erect
its plumes and deject them, to contract and to dilate the range and orbit
of its flight in a steadily inverse degree to the proportionate interest
of the subject or worth of the topic in hand. There could be no surer
proof that it is neither the early nor the hasty work of a great or even
a remarkable poet. It is the best that could be done at any time by a
conscientious and studious workman of technically insufficient culture
and of naturally limited means.

I would not, however, be supposed to undervalue the genuine and graceful
ability of execution displayed by the author at his best. He could write
at times very much after the earliest fashion of the adolescent
Shakespeare; in other words, after the fashion of the day or hour, to
which in some degree the greatest writer of that hour or that day cannot
choose but conform at starting, and the smallest writer must needs
conform for ever. By the rule which would attribute to Shakespeare every
line written in his first manner which appeared during the first years of
his poetic progress, it is hard to say what amount of bad verse or
better, current during the rise and the reign of their several
influences,--for this kind of echo or of copywork, consciously or
unconsciously repercussive and reflective, begins with the very first
audible sound of a man's voice in song, with the very first noticeable
stroke of his hand in painting--it is hard to say what amount of
tolerable or intolerable work might not or may not be assignable by
scholiasts of the future to Byron or to Shelley, to Mr. Tennyson or to
Mr. Browning. A time by this rule might come--but I am fain to think
better of the Fates--when by comparison of detached words and collation
of dismembered phrases the memory of Mr. Tennyson would be weighted and
degraded by the ascription of whole volumes of pilfered and diluted verse
now current--if not yet submerged--under the name or the pseudonym of t