that he did not do it by
analysis. In the third place,--to say nothing of not doing it by
analysis,--if he had analysed it before he did it, he could not have
analysed it afterward in the literal and modern sense. In the fourth
place, even if Shakespeare were able to do his work by analysing it
before he did it, it does not follow that undergraduate students can.

A man of genius, with all his onset of natural passion, his natural
power of letting himself go, could doubtless do more analysing, both
before and after his work, than any one else without being damaged by
it. What shall be said of the folly of trying to teach men of talent,
and the mere pupils of men of talent, by analysis--by a method, that is,
which, even if it succeeds in doing what it tries to do, can only, at
the very best, reveal to the pupil the roots of his instincts before
they have come up? And why is it that our courses of literature may be
seen assuming to-day on every hand, almost without exception, that by
teaching men to analyse their own inspirations--the inspirations they
have--and teaching them to analyse the inspirations of other
men--inspirations they can never have--we are somehow teaching them
"English literature"?

It seems to have been overlooked while we are all analytically falling
at Shakespeare's feet, that Shakespeare did not become Shakespeare by
analytically falling at any one's feet--not even at his own--and that
the most important difference between being a Shakespeare and being an
analyser of Shakespeare is that with the man Shakespeare no submitting
of himself to the analysis-gymnast would ever have been possible, and
with the students of Shakespeare (as students go and if they are caught
young enough) the habit of analysis is not only a possibility but a
sleek, industrious, and complacent certainty.

After a little furtive looking backward perhaps, and a few tremblings
and doubts, they shall all be seen, almost to a man, offering their
souls to Moloch, as though the not having a soul and not missing it were
the one final and consummate triumph that literary culture could bring.
Flocks of them can be seen with the shining in their faces year after
year, term after term, almost anywhere on the civilised globe, doing
this very thing--doing it under the impression that they are learning
something, and not until the shining in their faces is gone will they be
under the impression that they have learned it (whatever it is) and