dissent.--Mr. White thinks, and it
appears that the German critic, Gervinus, coincides with him, that
Shakespeare must have acquired all his best ideas of womanhood after he
went to London, and conversed with the ladies of the city. And in
support of this notion he cites the fact--for such it is--that the women
of the poet's later plays are much superior to those of his earlier
ones. But are not the _men_ of his later plays quite as much superior to
the men of his first? Unquestionably they are. Are not his later plays
as much better _every way_, as in respect of the female characters? Mr.
White is too wise and too ripe in the theme to question it. The truth
seems to be, that Shakespeare saw more of great and good in both man and
woman as he became older and knew them better; for he was full of
intellectual righteousness in this as in other things. But if there must
be any conjecturing about it, we prefer to conjecture that the poet
caught his ideas of womanhood, or at least the rudiments of them, from
his mother, and other specimens of the sex in his native town. For in
this matter it may with something of special fitness be said that a man
finds what he brings with him the faculty of finding; and he who does
not learn respect for woman in the nursery and at the fireside will
hardly learn it at all. The poet's mind did not stay on the surface of
things. He had the head to know, and the heart to feel, the claims of
humble, modest worth; for, as he was the wisest, so was he also the most
human-hearted of men. And to his keen, yet kindly eye, the
plain-thoughted women of Stratford may well have been as pure, as sweet,
as lovely, as rich in all the inward graces which he delighted to unfold
in his female characters, as anything he afterwards found among the
fine ladies of the metropolis: though far be it from us to disrepute
these latter; for he was, by the best of all rights, a thorough
gentleman; and the ladies who pleased him in London had womanhood
enough, no doubt, to recognize him as such, without the flourishes of
rank. At all events, it is reasonable to infer that the foundations of
his mind were laid before he left Stratford, and that the gatherings of
the boy's eye and heart were the germs of the man's thoughts. And,
indeed, if his great social heart had found all the best delights of
society in London, how should he have been so desirous, as Mr. White
allows he was, to escape from the city, and set up his rest in