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rebuke to national vanity contained in these remarks ; and may note the circumspection with which Mr. M. Arnold guards himself against doing obvious injustice to the English type of literary excellence.1 Yet there remains the stubborn fact that a 'literature of genius' is rarer and more luminous, though less imitable and less adapted to average utilities, than a literature of intelligence.' The question really is, which sort of literature the world would the more willingly let die, in the comfortable assurance that by industry and selfcontrol it could at any time recover it. Most men, I think, would answer this question by saying that a literature of genius,' evolved under conditions so exceptional as that of England in the sixteenth century, is more irrecoverable and less likely to be reproduced, even though more wayward, insular, and incoherent, than a literature of 'openness of mind;' and that therefore this literature is quite incalculably more valuable. All nations, including even the English, have recently made considerable progress

1 It seems to me a critical mistake to call genius 'mainly an affair of energy.' The genius of such a poet as Shakspere implies certainly more creative energy than his critics and admirers have. But we rate this genius so highly as we do for far other qualities; for finer moral and intellectual penetration than is given to merely energetic personalities, for sensibility to the rarest natural influences, for a diviner intelligence of secrets and a more god-like openness of mind to the world's utmost loveliness than fell to the lot of, for example, Voltaire. It is for these high gifts, not for its energy, that we value the genius of Shakspere. And if we turn to science; is it for energy that we value Newton or Darwin? Surely we value Whewell for energy; but Newton or Darwin for exceptionally potent sympathy with truths implicit in things subject to the human mind. Energy, indeed, is needed to pursue these truths to their last hidingplace, and to produce them for the common mind of man. But energy alone is the mere muscle of genius, the thews and sinews of an organism differentiated by its delicacy and its power of divination.

in the acquisition of a sound prose style, in the vulgarisation of philosophical thought, and in the polite treatment of a variety of useful topics. But which of all the nations has produced a literature of genius?

Our Drama remains the monument of peculiar mental power; eccentric and unequal; full of poetry and thought, but deficient in neatness and moderation; with more of matter than of polish, of Pan than of Apollo; rough where the French is smooth, fiery where the French glitters, rude where the French is elegant; sublime, imaginative, passionate, where Gallic art is graceful, prosaic, rhetorical, and superficial.

It would be difficult for an impartial critic to accuse Elizabethan literature of inherent barrenness and poor results. The civil wars, indeed, suspended the aesthetical development of Englishmen. A sect averse to arts and letters triumphed, and were followed by a dissolute half-foreign reign. Political and religious interests, more grave than those of art, consigned the dramatists and poets of the sixteenth century to oblivion for a time. A new taste in literature succeeded, ran its course, and dwindled in a century to decadence, after powerfully influencing the development of English thought and style. But the spirit of the Elizabethan age has revived in this age of Victoria. The memory of those poets, like the memory of youth and spring, is now an element of beauty in the mental life of a people too much given to worldly interests. The blossoms, too, of that spring-time of poetry, unlike the pleasures of youth or the flowers of May, are imperishable.

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We need only peruse the Fourth Book of the 'Golden Treasury,' and take mental stock of the four or five great living poets of our race, in order to perceive in how deep and true a sense English poetry, by far the richest, most varied, sweetest, and most powerful vein of poetry in modern Europe, is still sympathetic to the poetry of the sixteenth century. I care to say nothing here about the influence of Elizabethan English Literature over the recent Literatures of Germany, France, and other nations.

XVIII.

The English Drama enjoyed singular advantages of freedom from cramping restraints, whether imposed by educated opinion or by a cautious Government. The playwrights and the public were unfastidious and uncritical. While the wits of Italy apologised for making use of their mother tongue, absorbed their energies in scholarship, bowed to the verdict of coteries, and set the height of style in studied imitation of the Romans, our poets wrote 'as love dictates,' consulted no authority but nature, and appealed to no standard but popular approbation. Literature sprang up in England when the labour of restoring the classics had already been achieved, and when the superstitious veneration for antiquity had begun to abate. Men of learning were not the national poets of England, as they were of Italy; nor did the universities give laws of taste to the people. Our poets were not scholars in the strict sense of that term; or if scholars, they were renegades from Alma

Mater, preferring London to Oxford or Cambridge, the theatre to the lecture-room, Bandello and Spanish Comedies to Seneca and treatises on the Poetics. There existed no tyrannous Academy, like that before whose verdict Corneille had to bow, when Richelieu condemned the Cid for violating rules of art.

On the other hand, the dramatists were almost equally unfettered by authority. To write what they chose so long as they did not blaspheme against religion, libel the Government, or grossly corrupt public morality, was the privilege secured to them by royal letters patent. This liberty would have been impossible in any one of the small jealous states of Italy. It would have been impossible in any country where the Holy Office held sway, or where the Church was independent of the State.

It might be urged that though exemption from political and ecclesiastical interference was an advantage to our theatre, some subordination to learned taste would have been salutary. This argument cannot, however, be maintained in the face of what is known about the influence of academies upon the Drama in Italy and France. Certainly, the form of English plays leaves much to be desired upon the score of art and careful workmanship. But this imperfection is the defect of a quality so valuable that, while we regret and censure it, we are bound to remain. satisfied. The lively irregularities of a Dekker or a Heywood are more acceptable than the lifeless correctness of a Trissino or a Sperone. It was, moreover, from the matrix of this untutored art that jewels like Hamlet' and 'Vittoria Corombona,' 'The Broken

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Heart,' and 'The Maid's Tragedy,' emerged in all their conspicuous lustre.

Great monuments of art must be judged by their own ideal, and not by that of diverse, if no less commanding, excellence. The men who supplied the London theatres in that age, understood their trade. The art of writing plays was not acquired in the study, but fostered by the intellectual conditions of the time. It grew gradually from small beginnings to great results. Successive masters developed this art, each taking from his predecessors what they had to teach. The playwrights formed a tradition. They acquired technical dexterity in their use of words and rhythms, ornaments of style, and modes of exposition. They learned how to handle subjects dramatically, studied the modes of entrances and exits, the introduction of underplots, the heightening of action to a climax, the creation of striking situations for their leading characters. It may be observed that in all branches of intellectual industry, wherever technical discovery is demanded as a condition of success, a school comes into being. Men of the highest genius have first to practise their art as a handicraft, before they breathe into its forms the breath of their own spiritual life. This was eminently the case with Italian painting. Young artists were articled to Ghirlandajo at Florence, to Perugino at Perugia, to Squarcione at Padua. In the workshops of those masters the pupils learned how to mix colours and compose the ground for fresco, how to strain canvases and prepare surfaces; they studied design, perspective, drawing from the model; became acquainted with conventional methods of treating