As for the pure absurdities of criticism, they may be culled like flowers from every branch, and are pleasing curiosities for those who have a liking for such relics. Were human nature less complacent in its self-sufficiency, they might even serve as useful warnings to the impetuous young reviewers of to-day, and so be not without their salutary influence on literature. Whether the result of ignorance, or dullness, or bad temper, of national or religious prejudices, or of mere personal pique, they have boldly challenged the ridicule of the world, and its amused contempt has pilloried them for all time. When Voltaire sneered at the Inferno, and thought Hamlet the work of a drunken savage, he at least made a bid for the approbation of his countrymen, who, as Schlegel wittily observes, were in the habit of speaking as though Louis XIV. had put an end to cannibalism in Europe. But what did Englishmen think when Hume informed them that Shakespeare was "born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without instruction from the world or from books;" and that he could not uphold for any time "a reasonable propriety of thought"? How did
