1898.] SMYTH — PERICLES AND APOLLONIUS. 267 



edge of life. Metrical tests soon overshadowed everything else in 

 the society's work, Shakespeare was turned into a calculation table 

 for the enumeration of feminine endings, stopt lines, middle 

 caesura, weak endings, middle extra syllables, and for the experi- 

 ment of the initial trochee test, pause test, prevalent word test, 

 and choric reflection test. Out of these researches and the de- 

 velopment in the so-called aesthetic criticism of such uncouth termin- 

 ology as * ' first reconciliation period, " " second recognition period, ' ' 

 etc., etc., there was constructed an ideal biography of Shakespeare. 

 And without being actually advanced a single step in our knowledge 

 and enjoyment of the Shakespearian drama, we were told to recognize 

 in the order of the plays as fancifully set forth by the commentators 

 the whole of Shakespeare's spiritual experience. We were to see 

 him "in the workshop, in the world, out of the depths, and on the 

 heights. ' ' Moreover, the New Shakspere Society made much of the 

 discovery of strange hands in Shakespeare's text. This reference of 

 dubious or dolorous lines to anonymous or conjectural aliens is as 

 old as Coleridge, who, like Simpson, of Edinburgh, who was unal- 

 terably convinced of the infallibility of Euclid^ fancied it impossi- 

 ble for Shakespeare to drowse, and so pronounced all his faults to 

 be the intrusion of some unknown playwright. Our better in- 

 formed critics identify the perpetrator of the outrage and brand 

 upon him his mischievous meddling. 



All of Shakespeare's plays, according to the laborious researches 

 of the New Shakspere Society, fall into three or perhaps four 

 groups — the lyric and fantastic, the comic and historic, and the 

 tragic and romantic. And these groups comprehend the years that 

 lie between 1590 and 1610. *' The entrance to the third period of 

 Shakespeare," says Mr. Swinburne, "is like the entrance to that 

 last and lesser Paradise of old ' with dreadful faces thronged and fiery 

 arms.' " It is the period of stormiest tragedy beyond and upon 

 which shine the mellow glory and serene splendor of the romantic 

 plays with which Shakespeare's career, victorious after years of 

 disaster and bitter experience, concludes. In this final period 

 Pericles is classed. With all his unrestrained eloquence, Mr. 

 Swinburne, after washing his hands of the brothel scene in defer- 

 ence to a public of " nice and nasty mind," has said of Pericles : 

 "But what shall I now say that may not be too pitifully unworthy 

 of the glories and the beauties, the unsurpassable pathos and sub- 

 limity inwoven with the imperial texture of this very play ? The 



