ON SOME PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 73 



belong to him from. Henry VIII. ; before we entertained 

 the question of touchings and rehandlings necessitated by his 

 double craft of theatre-proprietor and playwright. Not an 

 atom of dry-as-dust learning, derived from the microscopical 

 collation of texts, from anxious scrutiny of deeds and records, 

 from tedious bibliographical and chronological researches, 

 goes for naught in our intelligence of Shakespeare. 



Each rill of minute investigation swells the main current of 

 criticism. Each limitation of the subject under consideration 

 acts like a useful dam against the irruption of conceit and 

 fancy in the critic. The more he knows of fact, the less can 

 he expatiate in regions of conjecture. 



Take a minor instance. Suppose we are about to deal 

 with Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella.' Have we here a key 

 to unlock Sidney's heart ? Are those enigmatical poems, the 

 first love-poems composed in England on a complicated auto- 

 biographical theme, to be accepted (as they seem to be 

 intended) for the diary of Sidney's feelings ? Can they be 

 explained by what is known of the chronology of his brief 

 manhood ? What light is thrown upon them from the thre- 

 nodies with which his death was greeted, and the numerous 

 allusions to his name dispersed through all the writings of 

 that period ? To what extent must allowance be made for 

 the Italian influences under which the courtier-poet, the 

 travelled scholar, the morning star of the renascence in our 

 island, penned them ? Are they in fact the serious record of 

 real life-experience, or the sport of Platonising fancy in a 

 studied form of art, or something intermediate, to which 

 both man of heart and man of letters gave their quota ? 



The answers to these questions, if any satisfactory answers 

 can be given, are only to be arrived at after a comparison of 

 dates, a study of collateral documentary evidence, a careful 

 examination of the allusions to facts and incidents embedded 

 in the poems, and a detailed analysis of the earliest printed 

 editions of the book with special reference to the order of the 

 several pieces. It is only by following such a method that 

 the critic will venture to decide how the sonnets and songs 

 which constitute the body of the work should be arranged, 



