THE MIND OF SHAKESPERE
most teachers unconsciously lean to, there is an implication which not a few lovers of poetry may care to challenge. Admitting that all the manifestations of genius are proper subjects for minute study, we may yet be fearful of the missteps of scholarship in the uncertain field of art; we may doubt whether any phrase which even slightly emphasizes the design and intention of the great poet's craft, does not follow as an unrecorded premise the critic's knowledge of his own rather than of Shakspere's mind.
For we cannot too often recall that this man's fame, moving up through heavens of misty or pedantic adoration, has obligingly modified itself to the scope of the beholding eye. Whatever rest his curse procured for his bones, we have made chameleon work of his reputation. We have thought of him with Ben Jonson as an improviser, or with Milton as
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