Mr. Dyce and Mr. Singer are only dry commonplace-books of
illustrative quotations; Mr. Collier has not wholly recovered from his
"Corr. fo."-madness; Mr. Knight (with many eminent advantages as an
editor) is too diffuse; and we repeat our honest persuasion, that Mr.
White has thus far given us the best extant text, while the fulness of
his notes gives his edition almost the value of a _variorum_. We shall
look with great interest for his succeeding volumes.
[Footnote N: Mr. White is mistaken in thinking that to say "my country"
for "my county" was a peculiarity of Shallow. It was common in the last
century in England. He is wrong also in thinking that he was restoring a
characteristic vulgarism in _aleven_. Gabriel Harvey uses it, and says
there is no difference in sound between that and _a leaven_.]
* * * * *
In the introductory part of this article, we said that it was doubtful
if Shakspeare had any conscious moral intention in his writings. We
meant only that he was purely and primarily poet. And while he was
an English poet in a sense that is true of no other, his method was
thoroughly Greek, yet with this remarkable difference,--that, while the
Greek dramatists took purely national themes and gave them a universal
interest by their mode of treatment, he took what may be called
cosmopolitan traditions, legends of human nature, and nationalized them,
by the infusion of his perfectly Anglican breadth of character and
solidity of understanding.
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