by many competent writers. Professor A. W. Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature' supplies what was conspicuous by its absence from our libraries in 1862, namely, a comprehensive and excellently balanced survey of the works of the chief dramatists. The New Shakspere Society has instituted an original method of inquiry into questions of text, chronology, and authorship. Mr. Swinburne, Professor Dowden, and Mr. Gosse have published monographs of fine critical and aesthetic quality. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, Mr. Churton Collins, Mr. A. H. Bullen, and the late Richard Simpson-to mention only a few prominent names-have enriched our stores of accessible documents with plays reprinted from rare copies or published for the first time from MS. Professor Arber and Dr. Grosart have placed at the student's disposition masses of useful materials, extracted from sources inaccessible to the general reader, and edited with unimpeachable accuracy. American scholarship, meanwhile, has not been altogether idle in this field; while German criticism has been voluminously prolific.
To mention all the men of distinction whose varied labours have aided the student of Elizabethan Dramatic Literature during the last twenty years, would involve too long a catalogue of names and publications.
may well feel diffidence in bringing forth my own