will run the unhallowed
thing to earth there, and bring it forth as a new and unsuspected
truth.

[Footnote 40: William Young's _History of Dulwich College_, 1889, II.,
41-2.]

Perhaps forgery is too big a word to apply to Steevens's concoction.
Others worked at later periods on lines of mystification similar to
his; but, unlike his disciples, he did not seek from his misdirected
ingenuity pecuniary gain or even notoriety. He never set his name to
this invention of "Peel" and "Marle," and their insipid chatter about
_Hamlet_ at the "Globe." Steevens's sole aim was to delude the unwary.
It is difficult to detect humour in the endeavour. But the perversity
of the human intellect has no limits. This ungainly example of it is
only worth attention because it has sailed under its false colours
without very serious molestation for one hundred and forty-three
years.

X

SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE[41]

[Footnote 41: This paper was first printed in _The Nineteenth
Century_, June 1899.]

I

Nothing but good can come of a comparative study of English and French
literature. The political intercourse of the two countries has
involved them in an endless series of broils. But between the
literatures of the two countries friendly relations have subsisted for
over five centuries. In the literary sphere the interchange of
neighbourly civilities has known no interruption. The same literary
forms have not appealed to the tastes of the two nations; but
differences of aesthetic temperament have not prevented the literature
of the one from levying substantial loans on the literature of the
other, and that with a freedom and a frequency which were calculated
to breed discontent between any but the most cordial of allies. While
the literary geniuses of the two nations have pursued independent
ideals, they have viewed as welcome courtesies the willingness and
readiness of the one to borrow sustenance of the other on the road. It
is unlikely that any full or formal balance-sheet of such lendings and
borrowings will ever be forthcoming, for it is felt instinctively by
literary accountants and their clients on both shores of the English
Channel that the debts on the one side keep a steady pace with the
debts on the other, and there is no balance to be collected.

No recondite research is needed to establish this general view
of the situation. It is well known how the poetic career of Chaucer,
the earliest of great English poets, was