slightest effort is made at grouping, at perspective, at dramatic movement, or even at dramatic effect. The story is told by little patches; patch being tacked to patch. Not only are there no changes of scene announced in the text (according to the general fashion of the day), but none are indicated, and the dramatic story runs right on, like that in the history; jumping (as Dr. Faustus's pupil jumped out of France into Spain) from Syria to Rome, from Rome to Alexandria, from Alexandria to Athens, then to Rome again, then to Actium; and there we have our Romans, dying, Kirby-like, all over the plain, in different spots in scenes of a few lines (in one case only six). But when modern editors come, as they must, to divide these acts according to real changes of place and action, there are no less than thirteen clearly defined scenes in the former, and fifteen in the latter, of which one consists of but four lines; and some are of no dramatic or character-showing value whatever.

some

Shakespeare, as I have said before, plainly sat with his copy of North's Plutarch before him, and picked out here and there the incidents which he thought suitable to his purpose, because they told the story, some because they might be made effective by the actors, others because they appealed to his poetical and reflective powers; and then he worked them up piecemeal as he picked them out. In this, his most transcendent and his most characteristic production, he is even more closely adherent to his original, more parsimonious in the use of material, and less constructive and purposeshowing than in Romeo and Juliet.

If any other man, even any other man of his day, had done this, Jonson, Beaumont, Chapman, or even Fletcher, - instead of the most splendid dramatic poem that exists, we should have had one that would now allure as few readers as Sejanus, or Philaster, or Cæsar

and Pompey, or Evanthe and Demetrius do. It is not to Shakespeare's ability to take great pains, not even to a high art aim, not even to a purpose of any kind, that we owe the stupendous difference, but to his thought-teeming, beautyblooming brain, to his intuitive percep tion of the semblances and affinities of things and acts, to his ability to think and feel as the best minds of the world and the best hearts would see that the personages that he presented would have thought and felt under the circumstances in which they were placed; and above all it was owing to his ability, unconscious, spontaneous, to express all this in words charged with meaning as no other man ever charged them, — words loaded down, sometimes, with wealth of thought to their destruction, to his ability to do all this because he was reckless of rule and careless of criticism.

We have thus far considered Shakespeare's way of working chiefly in a general study of two of his most lauded and most laudable dramas: one produced at the farther and the other at the hither limit of what has been called his great period, the ten years from 1596 to 1607, when he was between thirty-three and forty-three years old. We have found that his method of doing his best work did not change in those busy years. We shall see hereafter that this accepted teacher of the world, this beloved master of its heart, was of all writers of high distinction the most lacking in purpose of any kind, the most indifferent to truth and to right, the most heedless both in plan and in the use of language, the most careless of consistency in his own designs, the most flagrant violator of the rules which he himself laid down, the most disregardful of decency, a writer who, having the finest moral perception that has yet been manifest in words, and being capable of intellectual life in the highest moral atmosphere, could do his daily work as if he, like his own Iago, lacked the moral sense.

Richard Grant White.

NEARLY two centuries ago Leibnitz called attention to the "collation of languages" as the best method of conducting researches into the early history of mankind. But this seed-thought, like so many others which the erudite and encyclopædic German philosopher scattered lavishly by the wayside, fell upon barren soil, and remained inert, until the discovery and cultivation of Sanskrit opened a broad and fertile field, in which it could take root and bear fruit. As early as 1770, Sir William Jones pointed out the remarkable similarity between Persian and Greek and Latin. Here, too, he was anticipated by Leibnitz, who had already detected this affinity, and had expressed his sense of it by the rather extravagant assertion that "entire verses may be written in Persian, and yet be understood by a German."

The recognition of a radical connection between certain languages led to the assumption of blood-relationship of the peoples speaking them. It was taken for granted that the nations composing the so-called Aryan branch of the human race were all actually akin. They were constantly spoken of in terms implying consanguinity, and genealogical trees of the Indo-Germanic family in all its ramifications were drawn out from data furnished by linguistics. Sanskrit was at first supposed to be the mother of this numerous progeny; but her claim was soon set aside, and it was finally agreed that no extant Aryan language could be regarded as the parent stock. They were all declared to be daughters of a mother long since deceased, a mother who left no literary or artistic remains and no historical record of herself, and concerning whom the tenacious memory of tradition has not preserved the slightest reminiscence. No suspicion that such a person had ever lived would have

arisen even in the minds of her eldest children, had it not been for the exist ence of offspring who could not otherwise be accounted for.

Naturally enough, an intense curiosity was aroused as to the home and habits, the moral code and religious creed, the social status and intellectual character, of this mysterious, hypothetical ancestress. Where was her abode, and in what manner did she live? What were her theories of the universe, her ethical notions, the objects of her worship, her system of theology, and the nature and extent of her mental endowments? Were her stores of knowledge, her acquaintance with the arts and sciences, her domestic relations, and her observance of the amenities and comities of life such as to make her a worthy member of a civilized community, or to entitle her to a place among "cultured people"? No sooner was it satisfactorily settled that this venerable mother of all Aryans had actually existed, a thing of real flesh and blood, and not a merely supposititious creature, born of a philologist's heated imagination, than questions like these began to put themselves forward and press for an answer.

Assuming as a fundamental principle that what the children possess in common they must have inherited from the parent, it was only necessary to determine the exact extent of this heirloom in order to ascertain the nature and value of the original property. If, for example, all the daughters had radically the same word for "dog," it was deemed quite legitimate to infer that the mother had kept dogs. By this method of procedure a long list was formed of names of animals and plants and metals, industrial arts and implements, weapons of war and of chase; words expressing social customs and family ties, mental as

well as material objects, and a great variety of ideas and conceptions with which the primitive Aryans were presumed to have been familiar. An attempt was made to reconstruct preëthnic society out of the elements of language, and to paint with simple word-pigments vivid genre pictures of prehistoric times. Thus a new science was born, and christened Linguistic Palæontology.

But linguistic paleontology was rather unfortunate in its godfather. A quarter of a century has elapsed since Adolphe Pictet held this infant science at the font (baptismal and typographical), gave it its name, and thus made himself, in some sort, a surety for its proper discipline and development.' Unluckily, gossip Pictet proved to be a person quite devoid of the discernment and discretion essential to the fit exercise of the sponsorial office. He soon lost control of his precocious charge, indulged its wildest whims, admitted its most extravagant claims, nursed its budding vanity, mistook forwardness and frowardness for marks of genius, never questioned its assertions, and resented the slightest reprimand or suggestion of chastisement as an insult, until his pampered and over-petted godchild became the tyrant. of the philological household and l'enfant terrible of the scientific world. In his foolish fondness and inordinate ambition, he was not content that the bantling should first creep, but wished that, like the dwarf Vishnu, it should suddenly swell into gigantic proportions, and step at once into full possession of heaven and earth. No wonder that many a lean and hungry-eyed ethnologist, as he peeped about under the huge legs of this upstart colossus, so presumptuously bestriding the world he had hitherto called his own, should indignantly exclaim,

"Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,
That he is grown so great?"

1 Les Origines Indo-Européennes, ou les Aryas Primitifs. Essai de Paléontologie Linguistique. Par Adolphe Pictet. 2 vols. Paris. 1859-1863.

Why, my dear Cassius, he is a vegetarian of the most radical type, and subsists on roots of speech, which he gathers indiscriminately from every quarter, and usually eats crude, but does not scruple to cook them, whenever he finds them too tough for mastication.

By a skillful manipulation of piquant sauces a French cook can make a palatable and plausible dish out of the most meagre materials. Monsieur Pictet, although a Genevan by nationality, was a Frenchman by blood, and endowed with his full share of the culinary genius of the race. It is the cleverness of the chef de cuisine applied to literary production that puts into French books, whether belletristic or scientific, a savory and appetizing quality independent of their substantial merits, and composes an elegant and relishable ragout out of ingredients which, in the hands of a German, would at once betray their poverty, and produce only a vile and vapid hotchpotch.

Monsieur Pictet sets out with the intention of placing the primitive Aryans on the highest possible pinnacle of culture, and persistently ignores or brusquely pushes aside whatever interferes with this design. In order to prove, for example, that they "already possessed most of the useful plants which form the basis of our agriculture," he brings together a number of heterogeneous words, some arbitrarily compounded and others absolutely created, but scarcely one affording the slightest support to the prop osition he wishes to maintain. No matter whether a Sanskrit word is found in the Vedas or in the later epic and dramatic poems, every watercourse is welcome that feeds his flume and grinds his grist. He introduces into philology the system of questioning by torture, long since banished from courts of law. Young and innocent words, which refuse to incriminate themselves, or to testify concerning events which occurred thousands of years before they were born, are put to

the rack, and stretched or lopped to fit a Procrustean theory. The same process of reasoning by which it is shown that the ancient Aryans cultivated nearly all our cereals and were familiar with our principal metals would also prove, beyond a peradventure, that the punchbowl cheered their hearts and homes. The word "punch" is common to all European languages, and is found in Sanskrit and Hindustânî. It means a drink composed of five (pancha) ingredients, arrack, sugar, tea, water, and lemons, each of which must have been known to the primitive punch-makers. Whether the name of this beverage came into Europe with the first Indo-Germanic migrations, or was introduced by Englishmen from India within the memory of men still living, is a matter of minor importance. It suffices that we have the word, and that Sanskrit explains it. Again, Monsieur Pictet imagines some old Aryan exclaiming, Kabhara! quel aliment! Hence the old German habaro and the modern German hafer, oats. That this utterance expressed, not disgust, but admiration, is inferred from Pliny's account of the fondness of the Germans for oatmeal gruel. It is pleasant to think of our remote ancestors as not "men of squeamish taste to entertain," but rather as sturdy, omnivorous feeders, who never vexed their good housewives by dainty appetites. If one went into interjectional ecstasies over oat-pap, another, as he sat down to his millet, cried out, also dans le sens laudatif, Karasa! quelle nourriture! hence the German hirsi, hirse, and the English hyrse. The same exclamation gave us the word for cherry: Karasa! quel suc! — képaσos, cerasus, and cerise. It is to be regretted that the ingenious discoverer of this new and fruitful etymological principle did not apply it to a fuller extent. Who can doubt that the aboriginal Aryan waterman, as he paddled his dugout on the Oxus or the Yaxartes, exclaimed in delight, Kanu!

What is more nat

what a boat, canoe! ural than that some mighty hunter of that day, as he saw a strange beast bounding through the primeval forest, should have shouted Kâñgaruha! what a body springing up, kangaroo! Would it be possible to find a more expressive term for the itinerant menagerie or caravan which pitched its tent on the Bactrian plains than karavana (what roaring)? Perhaps, too, we owe the word cimeter to a warrior who, as he wiped the blood from his sword, condensed his Berserker exultation in the emphatic phrase, kim atere, how it went through them!

Having thus provided the primitive Aryans with cherries, Monsieur Pictet would fain comfort them with apples. The Kelts had their ubhall, the AngloSaxons their appel, the old Germans their aphul, the Lithuanians their óbůlas; but there is no corresponding word in Sanskrit. Many a wary and timorous scholar would have turned back from the brink of such a chasm, and concluded that his quest of this fruit must be confined to certain European branches of the Aryan stock. Not so, however, a bold, creative genius. "No word? Go to, let us make one. Phala means fruit, and with the prefix â or a prosthenic a we have úphûla or aphûla: le voilà!" To account for the absence of such a word in Sanskrit, it is suggested that the Indo-Aryans may have lost it in crossing the Himalaya, and passing into the zone of tropical fruits. Historiographers and botanists, from Quintus Curtius Rufus to Alphonse de Candolle, uniformly describe Bactria as a fruitgrowing region. Our Aryan ancestors lived in Bactria; therefore they had fruit and ate apples. Thus a doubtful hypothesis is introduced as the minor premise of a syllogism, and made the basis of a still more questionable conclusion. In lack of linguistic data, this kind of reasoning is frequently employed, and by dint of it several important beasts,

such as the camel, the lion, and the tiger, are added to the primitive Aryan fauna. Although Pictet's methods of conducting his researches were severely criticised by some of the more sober and circumspect philologists, and the results seriously called in question, they were, nevertheless, accepted by many others, who hastened to erect upon the newly won and rather queachy foundations prehistoric edifices, excessively florid in style and most fantastic in construction. French scholars, like Lenormant and De Rougemont, put implicit confidence in Pictet's deductions, and took them as the starting-point for further investigations into the origin and growth of Semitic culture and civilization. Even the Germans, so keen and cautious and skeptical in matters of historical evidence, so strong against documental proof, were ready to receive the slightest suggestion and most equivocal testimony of words with eager and uncritical credulity. An essay published by Ferdinand Justi in Raumer's Taschenbuch for 1862 depicts the primeval period of the Indo-Germanic race" in the brightest and most attractive colors. It is a painting of scenes from Utopia, in which the German sets his palette to the key, and preserves the tone of the Genevan limner; a picture of the golden age, which might have borrowed its tints from Zuccheri's Belli Anni d'Oro, and taken its models from Milton's vision of Adam and Eve in Eden. Not only did men and women in this Aryan paradise dwell together in the most harmonious and delightful relations, but they were also exempt from the ills that flesh is heir to in our corrupt and degenerate age. Disease, with its dark and melancholy train of woes, found no admission there. Wounds received in battle and the natural decay which follows maturity in the development of the mental and physical powers were the only forms, we are told, in which death visited this happy people.

A prehistoric sketch of this kind is like an impressionist's landscape. Seen from a distance, it stands out in distinct outlines and well-blended colors; but on closer inspection the forms grow dim and disappear, and the whole scene dissolves into a mass of blurs and blotches, with here and there only faint traces of a vague and vaporous shape, — "If shape it may be called that shape has none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb." In either case, the result is not a reproduction or representation of any reality in nature, but merely the elaboration of a theory, the embodiment of a preconceived idea.

On the shore of Lake Leman, opposite Clarens, is a figure formed of the rocks and trees which cover the lower slope of the Savoyan Alps, and known as the "lady of the lake." It is so clearly defined against the mountain side that it can hardly escape the notice of even a Cook's tourist on his perfunctory pilgrimage to Chillon. But whoever should attempt to approach this majestic dame of the olden time with hoopskirt and coal-scuttle bonnet would find that she had suddenly vanished into a jumble of rugged cliffs and tangled thickets. Such would be the fate of the traveler who, were a journey of this kind possible, should visit the old Aryan homestead with Justi's essay as a guide-book, and Pictet's two stout volumes as a work of reference. How many illusions of etymology would the autopsy dissipate! What disenchantments, as the rude contact with actualities should break the spell woven of words, and the philological phantasm fade into a wild and savage waste!

The comparatively high culture which the linguistic palæontologist claims for primitive Aryan society is wholly inconsistent with the state of barbarism in which the descendants of the original stock are known to have lived at a period long after their supposed dispersion. It is incredible that a people