a knowledge of the poet's works; that, in short, the hearer or reader should understand me the better for having studied him, and understand him the better for having studied me. Somebody has said, that the best way to create an impression of originality nowadays, is to utter, as your own, things known and taught so long ago that they have passed out of remembrance; since in this way you will be sure to hit the native good sense of people while telling them things they are unused to hear. How this may be I cannot say but if I succeed in adding the interest of novelty to any notions so old and true that they are in danger of being forgotten, I shall feel that the four years mostly spent on these lectures have not been thrown away. Respectfully dedicating the work, for better or for worse, to one whose consent with me has been among my strongest grounds for hoping that I might not have laboured altogether in vain, I am Sincerely your friend, Boston, April, 1848. H. N. HUDSON. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. LECTURES ON SHAKSPEARE. LECTURE I. ON SHAKSPEARE'S LIFE AND CHARACTER HIS THEATRICAL LABOURS -HIS POEMS AND SONNETS. race. SHAKSPEARE, by general concession, is the greatest ◄ name in literature. Such various, and, at the same time, such exalted powers, probably never met together in the mind of any other human being. Whether we regard the kind or the degree of his faculties, he not only is, but is everywhere allowed to be, the prodigy of our Of the various excellencies of literary production, whether as a thinker or a speaker, in none has he a superior, in many he has no equal, in some he has scarcely even a competitor. He is emphatically the eye, tongue, heart of humanity, and has given voice and utterance to whatever we are and whatever we see. On all scores, indeed, he is the finest piece of work human nature has yet achieved; in the whole catalogue of uninspired men there is no other name that could not better be spared. It is of the works of this great master of human thought and speech that I am about attempting to disIt is due to myself, however, to say in the outset, that censure and gratuitous praise are alike foreign course. |