COMMENTARIES BY DR. G. G. GERVINUS PROFESSOR AT HEIDELBERG. TRANSLATED UNDER THE AUTHOR'S SUPERINTENDENCE BY F. E. BUNNETT, AUTHOR OF LOUISE JULIANE, ELECTRESS PALATINE AND HER TIMES. ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOLUME I. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. M.DCCC.LXIII. This Work is Copyright.] PREFACE. WITHOUT ITHOUT undervaluing in the least degree the laborious researches of those English critics, who by careful collation of manuscripts, archæological research, and historical investigation, have restored and illustrated the text of Shakespeare, it may be safely attested, that it is to Germany that we owe, if not the founders, yet the most able and systematic among the disciples of that school of Shakespearian critics, who have illustrated rather his thought than his language. his matter than his manner; who have studied his writings rather as those of a moralist, a thinker, a master of human nature, and a poet of all places and of all time, than as those of an English writer of a certain epoch. The labours of what may be not unfairly called the English school of Shakespearian critics are invaluable, for without them, the language in which the moralist and the poet has spoken, would have been often. |