INTRODUCTION xli 



and on being asked by Polixenes why she neglects 



them, Perdita replies : 



For I have heard it said, 

 There is an art which, in their piedness, shares 

 With great creating nature. 

 Pol. Say, there be ; 



Yet nature is made better by no mean, 

 But nature makes that mean ; so, o'er that art, 

 Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art 

 That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 

 A gentler scion to the wildest stock ; 

 And make conceive a bark of baser kind 

 By bud of nobler race ; this is an art 

 Which does mend nature, change it rather, but 

 The art itself is nature. 1 



Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, Cowley's first editor, 



finds that Cowley's ideas are sometimes conceived and 



expressed in the best manner of Shakespeare, and 



certainly points of similarity to the above are to be 



found in Cowley's lines upon grafting, where he says : 



It imitates her Maker's Power Divine, 

 And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine. 



For this reference I am indebted to my old friend, who, 

 by his recent election to the Chair of Zoology at Cam- 

 bridge, has revived and continues the century-old associa- 

 tions of the name, Professor Adam Sedgwick, with Trinity 

 College and the University. He drew my attention to its 

 important philosophical bearing, as showing Shakespeare's 

 idea that fundamentally Art and Nature are not essentially 

 distinct. Sir Ray Lankester, in his Romanes Lecture, re- 

 printed in " The Kingdom of Man," also alludes to the 

 same passage. 



