1898.] on the Early Life and Wo7'1c of Shalcespeare. 753 



subjected to precisely the kind of influences by which one endowed 

 with illimitable genius and boundless powers of acquiring knowledge 

 (and these must be assumed on any hypothesis) might in time be 

 wrought into the author of ' Hamlet ' and of ' Lear/ Reading his 

 plays in chronological order, we can trace the development of his 

 mighty intellect, until at last we are brought face to face with " a 

 thing most strange and certain " : the personal identity of the 

 final outcome of all those years with the man whom we have been 

 considering, and whom we can easily recognise as William Shake- 

 speare, late of Stratford. I live in daily expectation of this identity 

 being questioned. It is satisfactory to feel that when Hallam's 

 anticipation is fulfilled, the interest of the subject which we have 

 been considering will not be lessened. But you may then have to 

 listen to many lectures, each dealing with the life and work of one 

 only of the several individuals into whom criticism shall have re- 

 solved the components parts of that mighty whole, which, in the 

 meantime, and provisionally, we still call William Shakespeare. 



[D. e. M.] 



