SHAKESPEARE. 59 



jeska may put into Juliet a breath of life not 

 known to Shakespeare's girl. Genius is gen- 

 ius, and asserts itself as superior, in its own 

 particular way, to every other genius in the 

 world. Shakespeare was a genius, and Victor 

 Hugo was as near the right as any critic 

 when he said that criticism cannot apply to 

 genius. We may point out errors of meth- 

 ods, of judgment, of execution, in the works 

 of a genius, but that part of those works 

 which testifies of genius is always beyond our 

 reach. 



In Shakespeare's works this unreachable 

 and therefore unassailable part is very large, 

 and it is incomparably many-sided and many- 

 colored. One reads Shakespeare with confi- 

 dence, because one feels no lurking insincerity 

 between his lines ; there is no conscious art, 

 in other words, padded and intercalated in 

 the tissue and fibre of the work; no posing 

 and attitudinizing of the author in the presence 

 of his creations. We feel sometimes that we 

 have been duped and made game of, but we 

 never catch the trickster wagging his thumbs 

 and puffing his cheeks at us. Indeed Shakes- 

 peare was the first humorist who did not 

 laugh at his own jokes, and he so far remains 

 the last. His simplicity sometimes borders 

 close upon mere baldness and flatness, but his 

 finish never suggests (as does most of our con- 

 temporary work) a laundry secret. 



I should adore Shakespeare, if for nothing 

 else, in recognition of his contempt for ana- 

 lytical realism. How he dashes on color, and 

 with what divine steadfastness he sticks to 

 heroic ideals, even when he appears to be dal- 

 lying with infinitesimals ! You never find him 

 probing and picking at a ganglion of motive 

 to trace it back to some obscure origin, as if 



