as' from the art of
literary criticism; but not, in a foolish and impercipient reaction, to
revive the impressionistic criticism which has sapped the English brain
for a generation past. The art of criticism is rigorous; impressions are
merely its raw material; the life-blood of its activity is in the
process of ordonnance of aesthetic impressions.

It is time, however, to return for a moment to Shakespeare, and to
observe in one crucial instance the effect of the quest for logic in a
single line. In the fine scene where John hints to Hubert at Arthur's
murder, he speaks these lines (in the First Folio text):--

'I had a thing to say, but let it goe:
The Sunne is in the heauen, and the proud day,
Attended with the pleasure of the world,
Is all too wanton, and too full of gawdes
To giue me audience: If the midnight bell
Did with his yron tongue, and brazen mouth
Sound on into the drowzie race of night,
If this same were a Churchyard where we stand,
And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs:
... Then, in despight of brooded watchfull day,
I would into thy bosome poure my thoughts....'

If one had to choose the finest line in this passage, the choice would
fall upon

'Sound on into the drowsy race of night.'

Yet you will have to look hard for it in the modern editions of
Shakespeare. At the best you will find it with the mark of corruption:--

+'Sound on into the drowsy race of night ('Globe');

and you run quite a risk of finding

'Sound one into the drowsy race of night' ('Oxford').

There are six pages of close-printed comment upon the line in the
_Variorum_. The only reason, we can see, why it should be the most
commented line in _King John_ is that it is one of the most beautiful.
No one could stand it. Of all the commentators, only one, Miss Porter,
whom we name _honoris causa_, stands by the line with any conviction of
its beauty. Every other person either alters it or regrets his inability
to alter it.

'How can a bell sound on into a race?' pipe the little editors. What is
'the race of night?' What _can_ it mean? How _could_ a race be drowsy?
What an _awful_ contradiction in terms! And so while you and I, and all
the other ordinary lovers of Shakespeare are peacefully sleeping in our
beds, they come along with their little chisels, and chop out the
horribly illogical word and pop in a horribly logical one, and we
(unless we can afford the _Variorum_, which we can't) know