progress of its growth-in short, to discover and to illustrate the internal law of its organization, and the unity both of mind and life, which pervades its whole form and all its parts and members. True criticism, therefore, is essentially reproductive. The critic must accomplish the same work as the poet, but with a different instrument. What the poet first called into being by the might of his artistic phantasy, the critic must reproduce by his reflex intellect, penetrating through the given object, and exhibiting it as a thought or intuition of the creative mind, which, in the domain of art, could take this outward form alone, and no other. While the former introduces into the phonomenal world his own inward intuitions, so that the thought becomes itself a phenomenon, the latter conversely carries back the phenomenon to the thought. This reduction is, however, at the same time a production and also a reproduction, since the study and full understanding of the artistic creation necessarily bring to light the primary thought which is enveloped in it. And so also, conversely, artistic production involves in it a reduction, however unconscious and instantaneous, inasmuch as the actual world, the truth of which is exhibited in the work of art, must have shaped itself to the thought and inward intuition of the artist, before it could present itself in its new artistic form. Thus the production of the artist is likewise a reproduction. But now the particular thought which, in a work of art, becomes a phenomenon, or its ground idea, as I have hitherto termed it, necessarily determines its entire form, and from it are derived the law and unity of its organisation. The business of the critic, consequently, resolves itself into the discovery and indication of this fundamental idea in every work of art that he attempts to examine.

Now there are two ways in which the critic may arrive at this end-the historical and the æsthetical. In the present day, the latter method is most in credit, and naturally, since so large a supply of sterling and counterfeit thoughts are daily brought to market that the value of this commodity is falling, and because every one who, by the process of assimilation, has thoroughly appropriated a little of this cheap mental aliment, considers it his own property, and proud of the possession, thinks himself qualified to have his own ideas on every subject. Historical

criticism, however, requires fundamental knowledge, and this is not so cheap an article; besides, a greater degree of stupidity is necessary to delude oneself on this point, whereas general notions are at all times vague and indeterminate. Historical criticism, for instance, considers a work of art as an historical phenomenon in the spirit of historiography, and therefore genetically, i. e. in the mode in which it arose primarily out of a particular principle under the co-operation of certain circumstances and relations; and secondarily, out of the life, mind, and character of the artist himself; and lastly, in so far as it was a production of the previous history of the art, of the general development of the human mind as shaped by the character of the times, and of the tone, tendency, or position of the latter with regard both to the past and the future. In this way the historical critic seeks to trace the ground idea of a work of art. The æsthetical method, ou the other hand, proceeds more abstractedly. It views the work of art purely in and for itself, and apart from all such references, as a special world complete in itself, and endeavours to understand it simply by the power of the cognitive thought, and out of and in itself to point out its ground idea. Both methods have their rocks and shallows. The historical critic is in danger of seeing in a particular work nothing but the special thoughts, tendencies, and interests of the age to which it belonged, and of overlooking the universal, by means of which it, at the same time, goes far beyond its age; while it is only too likely an error for him so to confound the individuality of the poet with that of his poems, as to elucidate the former, but not the latter. So, on the other hand, if the aesthetical critic introduces into a poem a view or idea which does not really lie in it, or if he takes what is called a point of view too high or too low, while the position within the same affords no true stable point, he immediately loses his living historical foundation, and the result is, critical reflections of all kinds, but not criticisms.

The best way, undoubtedly, is to combine the two methods, since, in truth, they both belong to each other. This I have endeavoured to do, so far as was possible, in the case of Shakspeare's plays. By its very nature, indeed, historical criticism, as every one must see, is only practicable to a certain extent.

In the case of Shakspeare's works, however, it is more than usually narrowed and complicated, partly because precise inforination of the life and individuality of the poet are wanting, and partly because, from reasons already adduced, it is impossible in every case to determine with sufficient accuracy the date of his several works; and lastly, because Shakspeare's works appear to have been but little influenced by the special tendencies, interests, and ideas of his own particular æra. Thus we are without those necessary means and connecting links, without which historical criticism cannot be successfully attempted. It must therefore confine itself to a general historical description of the state and progress of dramatic art in the sixteenth century, a general sketch of the age, and the personal character of the poet. On the other hand, in respect to the several productions of Shakspeare, it must give way to æsthetical criticism, and can only occasionally afford the latter any assistance.

It has already been frequently observed, and among others by Goethe, that, unlike other poets, Shakspeare did not choose for his several works a particular subject-matter, but that setting out with a certain idea he makes this the centre to which he adjusts his materials, and applies for its elucidation the world of history and imagination. (Shakspeare u. kein Ende Werk. Bd. 45.) This is, in fact, one of his characteristic peculiarities. While the principal works of other poets are not seldom simple variations of a single theme, exhibitions of one or other of the ideas directly prevailing in their day, with Shakspeare each piece revolves round its own axis, each is a peculiar world for itself, organized by its own laws, pervaded by one mind; and it is only when we are able to rise to the exalted position of their creative mind, that we perceive the wonderful harmony with which all these different stars combine again into one grand universal system. Only it is above all things necessary to guard against the error into which Goethe himself seems to have fallen, of supposing that the fundamental idea of a work of art could have for its subject-matter any particular religious dogma, moral law, philosophical conception, or even a mere maxim of the world or political principle. Goethe tells us, that through the whole of "Coriolanus" runs "the complaint that the populace refuse to recognise the precedence of

their betters; that in Julius Cæsar' all is relative to the conception that the nobles see unwillingly the supremacy assumed by one, while they fondly dream that they can still act in common; and that 'Antony and Cleopatra,' trumpet-tongued, proclaims the incompatibility of business and pleasure." (Ibid.) But if such be really the fundamental ideas of the above poems, then may we assert, with equal justice, Goethe himself sought to illustrate, in his Tasso, the proverb "Pride must have a fall;" in Egmont, that other adage, "Who will not hear must feel;" and in Faust, the philosophical common-place, "Man is a finite limited being, and ought to be conscious of such his nature." But the end of art and on this consideration the whole question hangsis far higher than to exhibit such so-called truths, which indeed in their one-sidedness and exaggeration are nothing less than errors. For such a purpose there was no need of so vast an expenditure of means, such unutterable labour and pains: such trite morals a child might learn from any hornbook, or from experience in his own case or that of others. Every genuine work of art will in its details, no doubt, instruct and quicken the mind, enrich it with truths of experience, with knowledge and ideas of every kind; but the special is not the end, and cannot therefore be the subject-matter- the ground idea of a work of art. On the contrary, art must exhibit the whole of life- universal history, in short, in its essence and truth; the whole view of the world of things, and consequently the law and end of the development of life and mind, must throughout be exhibited in its adequate form. But the universal view of the world, with the entire fulness of its subjectmatter, cannot be included in any single piece of art; in its totality it can only be exhibited in universal history, which is the grandest of all works of art. In order to admit of artistic representation the collective subject-matter must allow of being separately considered in its organic members. Accordingly, as it presents two grand aspects-the comic and tragic-it is in these that it must first of all be exhibited. But the very idea of an organic part implies that the whole is contained and perceptibly present in it. The whole of the tragic or comic view of things must, therefore, be distinctly present in every tragedy or comedy;

but as a single drama cannot mirror the whole history of the world, but only some particular episode of it, some unity-some intellectual and not serious unity of time, place, and action, the general view forms at most the intellectual stage on which the represented action is to move-the soul which is to hold together and animate the body of the drama. As it is common to all pieces of the same kind, it cannot be the source from which the several pieces derive their distinctive characters. When, therefore, we speak of the fundamental ideas of Shakspeare's plays respectively, nothing more is meant than that each expresses a special aspect of the organic totality of mind, each of them exhibits a particular modification of the general comic or tragic view of things dependent upon the special conditions of space and time, the posture of affairs, and accidental circumstances and relations in which the dramatic persons are placed. It is this alone that makes the ground idea of each of Shakspeare's dramas such as we have described it; that enables it, according to Goethe's observation, to furnish a central point to which the world and universe admit of being referred; it is only because it contains within itself the universality of all relations that every one admits of being carried back to it.

The attempt to give a proximate determination of the ground idea of Shakspeare's dramatic pieces severally, will prove at best but an imperfect essay. Each succeeding age will discover a greater store of references to the middle point of the whole, even because every genuine work of art bears, in itself, all the riches of life. To give them all, therefore, cannot be my design, otherwise I must give to each picce a volume. And on this consideration I must dispense with a critical analysis of the single dramas. All that I can do is to give the results of my own studies; that is, to point out the leading idea, and to shew generally how far it has determined the tone and colouring, the keeping and composition of the whole, and in what degree the choice and co-ordination of the several characters appear to be dependent on it. To trace all this through minute details, and scene by scene, must be left to the reader's own discernment.

For the reasons already given, I shall, in my examination of the