ve in vain to follow.
The mind almost loses itself in attempting to trace out through their
course the various and complicated lines of reflection here suggested.

* * * * *

We have no authentic contemporary notice of the play whatever, till it
appeared in the folio of 1623. I say _authentic_ notice; because the
item which, some years ago, Mr. Peter Cunningham claimed to have found
among some old records preserved at Somerset House, and which makes
the play to have been acted at Court in December, 1604, has been
lately set aside as a fabrication. Though printed much better than
_All's Well that Ends Well_, still the text set forth in the folio
gives us but too much cause to regret the lack of earlier copies;
there being several passages that are, to all appearance, incurably
defective or corrupt.

The strongly-marked peculiarities of the piece in language, cast of
thought, and moral temper, have invested it with great psychological
interest, and bred a strange desire among critics to connect it in
some way with the author's mental history,--with some supposed crisis
in his feelings and experience. Hence the probable date of the writing
was for a long time argued more strenuously than the subject would
otherwise seem to justify; and, as often falls out in such cases, the
more the critics argued the point, the further they were from coming
to an agreement. And, in truth, the plain matter-of-fact critics have
here succeeded much better in the work than their more philosophical
brethren; which aptly shows how little the brightest speculation can
do in questions properly falling within the domain of facts.

In default of other data, the critics in question based their
arguments upon certain probable allusions to contemporary matters;
especially on those passages which express the Duke's fondness for
"the life remov'd," and his aversion to being greeted by crowds of
people. Chalmers brought forward also the very pertinent fact of a
long-sleeping statute having been revived in 1604, which punished with
death all divorced or divorcing persons who married again while their
former husbands or wives were living. This circumstance, he thinks,
might well have suggested what is said by the Duke:

"We have strict statutes and most biting laws,--
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds,--
Which for this fourteen years we have let sleep;
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave,