litical
divisions have nothing to do with literature. We hear nothing of
Prussian literature or of Austrian literature; it is all
German--"Deutsch." And the eminent German philologist Mentzner, in his
great English grammar, that awful book in three octavo volumes, draws
for his countless illustrations quite as freely upon Bryant, Irving,
Longfellow, Hawthorne, Prescott, and their countrymen, as upon
Tennyson, Browning, Macaulay, and theirs. English literature is the
literature of the English race wherever it may be. It has nothing to do
with the distinctions British and American. They are political only.
This is true of all literature, even that of the day; but especially
and absolutely is it true of all English literature that was produced
before there was any New England. Shakespeare belongs to the people now
in England because when he wrote he and their forefathers lived
together in England and spoke the same tongue; and exactly for that
reason he belongs to all of us here who are of his race and tongue.
There is not the slightest difference between the relations of the two
people to the one man. This consideration applies, without
qualification, to all English literature before 1620; with slight
external, unessential modification, to that between 1620 and 1776; and
with somewhat greater external, but still unessential modification, to
all that has been produced since.

Mr. Wilkes, however, may reasonably reply that while he may or may not
agree with this view of English literature, there is in either case an
American point of view as to every subject--a view taken from the
position in which Americans stand politically and socially; a position
which affects their vision and their judgment of all subjects,
including literature, even in the form of dramatic poetry, the most
absolute form in which it can exist. He is to a certain extent right;
and waiving the question as to whether such a view is likely to have
any peculiar value, particularly in regard to dramatic poems produced
in the other hemisphere nearly three hundred years ago, let us see what
in this guise Mr. Wilkes has to present to us.

He opens his book with a reference to the "Baconian theory," as it is
called; that is, the notion that the plays published in 1623 as "Mr.
William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies," were
actually written by the great Bacon, incorrectly called Lord Bacon.
This notion, which may in a certain sense be called "Am