he mighty influence of Hugo was
insufficient to destroy. But at least the example of these Classicist
writers has proved that literature itself is not only profoundly
affected, but made and unmade, by theories of literature. And
Corneille and Racine bestowed at any rate this immeasurable benefit on
their countrymen: they taught them the lesson of form and technique--a
lesson which they have never forgotten, which is illustrated as much
in fiction as in drama--in Merimee, Flaubert, Maupassant and Anatole
France. Shakespeare, on the contrary, whose influence on English
literature has been supreme since the beginning of the Romantic
movement, provided no obvious model for the student of form. To the
casual reader his very imagination seems to be lawlessness and
extravagance, carrying him tempestuously and recklessly into the melee
of poetry. But every careful reader knows that Shakespeare was not so
reckless as he seems; observe how rigidly he conformed to the
conditions prescribed by the Elizabethan theatre and audience; it is
to the credit of his technique that he complied with these exacting
conditions without cramping the finer issues of poetry and drama. And
in the broader sense of the term Shakespeare's form was precisely
proportionate to his genius, though it is seen rather in the
transcendence of his poetry and the management by which his persons
are swept along on their own characters than in those more obvious
elements of form--structure of plot, the subservience of dialogue and
incident to the dramatic purpose, and all the minor probabilities and
proprieties. But it is just the obvious elements which are most
noticeable to those who study form in a superficial way; for those who
imitate Shakespeare, or are influenced by him, his careless freedom
and extravagance often bulk larger than the expression of genius which
made trifles of these defects. A result is that throughout the
nineteenth century Shakespeare has been for English authors not always
an inspiration, but a national pretext for decrying technique.

And yet those who had the insight and the power to restore Shakespeare
in all his fulness to English readers were wholly free from this
ignorance--conspicuously Charles Lamb and S.T. Coleridge. Coleridge
was indeed the first of Englishmen to think out anything like a
complete and satisfactory theory of poetry and the fine arts. The
supreme value of his theory comes from the fact that he was one of the
few