s follows: "Much of the
graver dialogue, especially in the first two Acts, reminds the
reader, in taste of composition, in rhythm, and in a certain
quaintness of expression, of _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_. The
comic part is spirited and laugh-provoking, yet it consists
wholly in the exposure of a braggart coxcomb,--one of the most
familiar comic personages of the stage, and quite within the
scope of a boyish artist's knowledge of life and power of
satirical delineation. On the other hand, there breaks forth
everywhere, and in many scenes entirely predominates, a grave
moral thoughtfulness, expressed in a solemn, reflective, and
sometimes in a sententious brevity of phrase and harshness of
rhythm, which seem to me to stamp many passages as belonging to
the epoch of _Measure for Measure_, or of _King Lear_. We miss,
too, the gay and fanciful imagery which shows itself
continually, alike amidst the passion and the moralizing of the
previous comedies."

I have elsewhere observed at some length[20] on the Poet's diversities
of style, marking them off into three periods, severally distinguished
as earlier, middle, and later styles. Outside of the play itself, we
have in this case no help towards determining at what time the revisal
was made, or how long a period intervened between this and the
original writing. To my taste, the better parts of the workmanship
relish strongly of the Poet's later style,--perhaps I should say quite
as strongly as the poorer parts do of his earlier. This would bring
the revisal down to as late a time as 1603 or 1604: which date
accords, not only with my own sense of the matter, but with the much
better judgment of the critics I have quoted. I place the finished
_Hamlet_ at or near the close of the Poet's middle period; and I am
tolerably clear that in this play he discovers a mind somewhat more
advanced in concentrated fulness, and a hand somewhat more practised
in sinewy sternness, than in the finished _Hamlet_. I will quote two
passages by way of illustrating the Poet's different styles as seen in
this play. The first is from the dialogue of Helena and the King, in
Act ii., scene 1, where she persuades him to make trial of her remedy:

[20] Page 190 of this volume.

"The great'st Grace lending grace,
Ere twice the horses of the Sun shall bring
Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring;
Ere twice