Shakspeare himself has left us a pregnant satire
on dogmatical and categorical esthetics (which commonly in discussion
soon lose their ceremonious tails and are reduced to the internecine dog
and cat of their bald first syllables) in the cloud-scene between Hamlet
and Polonius, suggesting exquisitely how futile is any attempt at a
cast-iron definition of those perpetually metamorphic impressions of the
beautiful, whose source is as much in the man who looks as in the thing
he sees. And elsewhere more directly,--Mr. White must allow us the old
reading for the sake of our illustration,--he has told us how
"Affection,
Master of passion, sways it to the mood
Of what it likes or loathes."
We are glad to see, likewise, with what becoming indifference the matter
of Shakspeare's indebtedness to others is treated by Mr. White in his
Introductions. There are many commentators who seem to think they have
wormed themselves into the secret of the Master's inspiration when they
have discovered the sources of his plots. But what he took was by right
of eminent domain; and was he not to resuscitate a theme and make it
immortal, because some botcher had tried his hand upon it before, and
left it for stone-dead? Because he could not help throwing sizes, was he
to avoid the dice which for others would only come up ames-ace?
Up to the middle of 1854,[C] there had been published in England and on
the Continent eighty-eight complete editions of Shakspeare in English,
thirty-two in German, six in French, and five, more or less complete,
in Italian.
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