thorship by the production of a list in which
such words as _slavery, emperor, pitying, difference_, and even
_Christians_, were actually registered as trisyllabic terminations. To
such unimaginable shifts are critics of the finger-counting or syllabic
school inevitably and fatally reduced in the effort to establish by rule
of thumb even so much as may seem verifiable by that rule in the province
of poetical criticism. Prosody is at best no more than the skeleton of
verse, as verse is the body of poetry; while the gain of such painful
labourers in a field they know not how to till is not even a skeleton of
worthless or irrelevant fact, but the shadow of such a skeleton reflected
in water. It would seem that critics who hear only through their fingers
have not even fingers to hear with.

{108} "La dynastie du bon sens, inauguree dans Panurge, continuee dans
Sancho Panca, tourne a mal et avorte dans Falstaff." (_William
Shakespeare_, deuxieme partie, livre premier, ch. ii,)

{125} Possibly some readers may agree with my second thoughts, in
thinking that one exception may here be made and some surprise be here
expressed at Shakespeare's rejection of Sly's memorable query--"When will
the fool come again, Sim?" It is true that he could well afford to spare
it, as what could he not well afford to spare? but I will confess that it
seems to me worthy of a place among his own Sly's most admirable and
notable sallies of humour.

{129} _History of English Dramatic Poetry_, ed. 1879, vol. ii. pp.437-
447. In a later part of his noble and invaluable work (vol. iii. p.188)
the author quotes a passage from "the induction to _A Warning for Fair
Women_, 1599 (to which Shakespeare most assuredly contributed)." It will
be seen that I do not shrink from admitting the full weight of authority
which can be thrown into the scale against my own opinion. To such an
assertion from the insolent organs of pretentious ignorance I should be
content with the simple rejoinder that Shakespeare most assuredly did
nothing whatever of the sort; but to return such an answer in the present
case would be to write myself down--and that in company to which I should
most emphatically object--as something very decidedly more--and
worse--than an ass.

{137} Not for the first and probably not for the last time I turn, with
all confidence as with all reverence, for illustration and confirmation
of my own words, to the exquisite critical genius of a l