e, has succeeded in it, that the spots in his sun
are so different from the spots in all other suns. I do not know an
unnatural character or an unnatural scene in Shakespere, even among those
which have most evidently been written to the gallery. Everything in him
passes, in some mysterious way, under and into that "species of eternity"
which transforms all the great works of art, which at once prevents them
from being mere copies of Nature, and excuses whatever there is of Nature
in them that is not beautiful or noble. If this touch is wanting anywhere
(and it is wanting very seldom), that, I take it, is the best, indeed the
only, sign that that passage is not Shakespere's,--that he had either made
use of some other man's work, or that some other man had made use of his.
If such passages were of more frequent occurrence, this argument might be
called a circular one. But the proportion of such passages as I at least
should exclude is so small, and the difference between them and the rest is
so marked, that no improper begging of the question can be justly charged.
The plays in the _Globe_ edition contain just a thousand closely-printed
pages. I do not think that there are fifty in all, perhaps not
twenty--putting scraps and patches together--in which the Shakesperian
touch is wanting, and I do not think that that touch appears outside the
covers of the volume once in a thousand pages of all the rest of English
literature. The finest things of other men,--of Marlowe, of Fletcher, of
Webster (who no doubt comes nearest to the Shakesperian touch, infinitely
as he falls short of the Shakesperian range),--might conceivably be the
work of others. But the famous passages of Shakespere, too numerous and too
well known to quote, could be no one else's. It is to this point that
aesthetic criticism of Shakespere is constantly coming round with an almost
monotonous repetition. As great as all others in their own points of
greatness; holding points of greatness which no others even approach; such
is Shakespere.

There is a certain difficulty--most easily to be appreciated by those who
have most carefully studied the literature of the period in question, and
have most fully perceived the mistakes which confusion of exact date has
induced in the consideration of the very complex subject before us--in
selecting dramatists to group with Shakespere. The obvious resource of
taking him by himself would frustrate the main purpose of this volu