sed to an intensity that made Johnson's admiration seem feeble and
niggardly. This transformation was due to many causes, but in the main
it was a part of the vast changes in European literature known as the
Romantic movement. This resulted in a rejection of the rules and models
of neo-classicism, a new interest in the literature and manners of the
Middle Ages, a conception of poetry as the expression of individuality,
attention to the individual man in all orders of society, a fresh
concern for external nature, an emphasis on the emotions rather than
mere reason, a desire for wonder and mystery, and an exaltation of
natural instincts and intuitions as opposed to general truths or social
conventions. In each of these particulars, Shakespeare seemed the
complete fulfilment of the new tendencies--which indeed his growing
influence had undoubtedly encouraged. More than Spenser or Milton or
the old ballads, he was the inspiration and guide for new endeavors in
literature. It seemed to the new age of critics and poets that they had
rediscovered him, and they hastened to raise him from neglect to the
throne of omniscience. He was no longer a wayward genius, he was the
model from whom art and wisdom were to be learned.

[Page Heading: Appreciative Criticism]

This new criticism was esthetic and appreciative. It did not try to
balance Shakespeare's merits and faults, or to test him by codes of arts
or morals. It recognized him as supreme, and its discipleship was
devoted to reverent interpretation and enthusiastic admiration.
Believing in the importance of the poetic imagination in the affairs of
men, it found in him a gospel and an example for its creed. Its
delightful task was to find new beauties and to search out the
hiding-places that revealed the god of its idolatry. If the genius of
the master-poet was the source of art and wisdom, the personality of the
critic gained a new refulgence through its service of reflecting the
rays of glory. The interest in the study of individual characters had
resulted, even in Johnson's day, in some notable interpretive essays, as
Maurice Morgann's on Falstaff (1777). In the next generation, Coleridge,
Lamb, and Hazlitt in England, and Schlegel and Goethe in Germany,
brought the keenest intelligence and most sympathetic taste to a
criticism that aspired to reveal the full range and height of
Shakespeare's creative faculty.

The results of this criticism may be more specifically summarize