further words on it would be wasted. And how it astonishes us English-tongued folk to be told by a distinguished scholar that lapsed means "surprised, taken in the act;" and that when Hamlet says to his father's ghost that he is "lapsed in time and passion" he means, "I am surprised by you in a time and passion fit for," etc.! Yet verily Dr. Schmidt does so tell us. Lapsed means lost in, given up to, abandoned to; and Hamlet says that he was feebly given up to procrastination and moody feeling. The notion that "lapsed" has any reference to the action or to the presence of the fancied ghost, is surely one of the most extraordinary pieces of Shakespearean exegesis that exists in that extraordinary literature. And so when the Shakespeare Lexicon tells us that in Touchstone's "Well said; that was laid on with a trowel," we have "a proverbial phrase, probably meaning without ceremony," how we are tempted into exclamatory utterances and unseemly laughter,

we who, not being scholars, have always understood it as meaning, simply, that was laid on thick, as a bricklayer lays on mortar! Nor has pitched in “ a pitched battle" anything to do with "the custom of planting sharp stakes in the ground against hostile horse." Pitch (of unknown etymology) means merely to place firmly and suddenly. A man pitches upon a site for his house; a clergyman pitches upon a text for his sermon; a singer pitches upon a note; we pitch upon anything that we choose quickly and decidedly. Tents were and are pitched; and to pitch a battle was to choose the ground for it and to array the troops. The old preterite was pight, which is used by Shakespeare:"When I dissuaded him from his intent, And found him pight to do it, with curst speech I threaten'd to discover him."

(Lear II. 1, 64.)

Here pight means merely fixed, set, as it does in this line of Spenser's:

"But in the same a little grate was pight." (Faerie Queene, I. viii. 37.)

And in Mandeville " a spere that is pight into the erthe" means merely a spear that is set into the earth. Pitch and pight used in regard to tents or spears or stakes do not mean more or other than when used in regard to anything else, a site, a text, a note, or what not. Nor does sheep-biter mean "a morose, surly, malicious fellow," or anything like that. If Dr. Schmidt had said it meant a thief, he would have had the support of good" authority" (whatever that may be). It was indeed applied to thieves, as in this line: "How like a sheep biting rogue, taken i' th' manner!" (Fletcher, Rule a Wife, etc., V. 4.) and so it was to malicious persons, as in the following line:

:

"His hate like a sheep-biter fleering aside."

(Tusser, Description of an Envious and Naughtie Neighbour, p. 112, ed. 1610.) But it was so applied merely because it was a general term of reproach. It means merely, mutton-eater. This I suggested in my first edition of Twelfth Night (1857); and afterwards I found the following reference to the phrase by Addison:

"Mutton... was formerly observed to be the food rather of men of nice and delicate appetites than those of strong and robust constitutions. For which reason even to this day we use the word Sheep-biter as a term of reproach, as we do Beefeater in a respectful, honorable sense." (Tatler, No. 148.)

Addison's testimony (and he mentions that he had consulted antiquaries — in 1709 on the subject of his paper) leaves no doubt as to the meaning of the compound, and as to its use as a general term of reproach. But I ven

ture a dissent from his inference in regard to delicate appetites. Mutton two and three hundred years ago was looked upon as very inferior food to venison and to beef; and "mutton-eater" coarsened into "sheep-biter" corresponded to the modern "tripe-eater." But even a glance here and there at my few casual checks upon the margins of his Lex

icon is leading me into prolixity, and I must end it, merely remarking upon the extraordinary misapprehension which gives "one who goes abroad' as the meaning of putter-out, in "each putterout of five for one;" which tells us (the word, unseen before, catches my eye just as I turn the leaves) that point blank means "with certain aim, so as not to miss," point blank having nothing to do with aim, or hitting or missing, but meaning merely, in a direct line, on a level, without elevation or depression of the gun; and finally at the ignorance which tells us that placket was "probably a stomacher." Now what a placket was I don't know; and therefore I say so plainly, and with no shame for my ignorance. But this I do know that of all the articles of feminine apparel, except a shoe and a bonnet, a stomacher was the one which most surely could not have been called a placket. Placket, if originally the name of an article of dress, was plainly not that of one which had another name.1

:

How "invaluable" the Shakespeare Lexicon is, how "admirable a combination of accuracy and acuteness," we may gather from this cursory glance over its mostly uncut pages. The scholarship of its compiler (and I hint no doubt as to

1 Those who care to refer to passages, few here quotable, which show that a placket could not possibly have been a stomacher may turn to "She 'll swap thee into her plackerd," Greene's Fr. Bungay and Fr. Bacon, p. 194; "Clarinda's placket," B. & F., Lover's Progress, IV. 3; "At all our crests (videlicet, our plackets)," B. & F., Woman's Prize, II. 4; "Keep thy hand from thy sword, and from thy laundress's placket," B. & F., Little French Lawyer, V. 2; "Look to your plackard, Madam," World of Wonders, 1607, p. 44; "to lend him her placket peece," Idem, p. 132. See passages which must be only referred to in Pills to Purge Melancholy, II. 19, 20, Ib. III. 4, Ib. IV. 217, Ib. IV. 324; the placket geer, Wit's Paraphrase, p. 14; "quit my placket," Ib. p. 27; "from my placket," Ib. 85; "the witches' placket," Ib. p. 111. The two latter especially noteworthy. And see also passages cited in my first edition of Shakespeare on Love's Labour 's Lost, III. 1, and King Lear III. 4.

2 A marginal check at the word quill catches my eye. The exhibition is too good to be passed

its amplitude and its thoroughness) is not at all to the purpose. The book plainly needs to be examined, article by article, by some competent English scholar of average common sense, and an appreciation of it set forth, before it becomes, by reason of its imposing form, its systematic arrangement, and its seeming scientific method, an "authority." Upon my casual examination, I venture merely the opinion that its erudite compiler lacks, perhaps, only one qualification for his task, an inbred understanding of the English of nowadays and of Shakespeare's time; that so far is he from being "accurate' that not only in words and phrases which are the proper subjects of explanation, but even as to those which need none to any average reader, he has made many mistakes; and that as to the rest his work is so far from being "invaluable" that it is utterly needless even to the least learned of my intelligent readers, a striking and characteristic exhibition and example of the superfluity of Shakespeareanism.2

quill" feeble note. This whole article on quill is wrong. So, too, I find, on the first page of vol. ii., mad defined as "besides one's self," this not by misprint, as is shown by the article on besides; and I see that I have no less than eight checks for like blunders to these in Much Ado, etc. I have not looked at this Lexicon since my first hasty glance through it after its publication, nine years ago. It is a very scientific, very systematic, very elaborate performance; and, like many scientific, systematic, elaborate performances, utterly worthless because misleading. This with great respect for Dr. Schmidt's erudition and industry. The Koenigsberg scholar merely does not apprehend English idiom as if it were his mother tongue, and should therefore not have undertaken to explain Shakespeare, of all writers!

"the distant random gun That the foe is suddenly firing."

I have truly not touched half the points as to which I made memorandums for this brief series of articles; but I must bring it now speedily to an end, and postpone fuller exposition to a more convenient season.1

The present result of what I cannot but feel to have been an incomplete examination of our subject seems to me to be the bringing forth, with evidence not to be gainsaid, of these truths: that most of our Shakespeare literature is a useless burden; that it is not only needless to the right understanding of Shakespeare, but largely misleading; that much of it is thus misleading because the writers wished to deliver themselves of something fine upon a great subject, and looked rather into their own "moral consciousness" than into Shakespeare himself, or to the facts and forces of which his works were the result; that the consequence of this has been a misapprehension of the character of Shakespeare's genius, although not an overestimate of its greatness; that there has been a like amiable misconception of his personal character; that he worked merely as a playwright, and not as a dramatist, with the ethnic, æsthetic aim of such men as Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; that the construction of his plays was not in any great degree his own; that he rarely gave it much thought, and that more rarely does it show much skill; that the characters of his personages were generally not of his conceiving in their elemental traits, but were determined by the old tales he dramatized and the old plays he worked over, from which in this respect they differ essentially in very few instances; that his personages are not always consistent in essence or in art; that Shakespeare wrote without any ethical purpose either in general design or particular passages, 1 When these and other papers of their kind shall be published by themselves.

and that he himself was indifferent in his feeling as to the moral character of his personages, and no less as to the decency of his ideas and the decorum of his language; that in his use of words and phrases he was heedless of correctness and consistency, and under a combinate pressure of thought and haste would set at naught not only the grammar of his time, but that logic which is the grammar of all time; that he was neither in purpose nor in fact at any time of his life original as to structural form or spirit, either as a dramatist or as a poet.

What, then, was Shakespeare? What is it that makes Time his preserver rather than his destroyer; that causes his reputation to harden into adamant under the pressure of centuries which crumbles others into the impalpable powder of oblivion; which sets him aboveyes, I shall not hesitate to say far above

even Homer and Dante, not to mention Eschylus and Euripides, and hardly to think of Goethe, - what is it? Any man may shrink, as I know that I shrink, with doubt of his ability to answer this question. But I venture to think that I do know the answer, although to give it here, at the end of an article, with any fullness or with satisfaction to myself would be impossible. Shakespeare's great and peculiar genius was not the genius of observation, of study, of cogitation, of labor: it was an intuitive, inborn knowledge of men and things in their elemental, eternal nature, and of their consequent relations, combined with an inborn faculty of expressing that knowledge such as has never been manifested in speech or writing by any other man known to history. And chiefly his genius lay in this power of expression. It is probable that many have approached him in his insight of man and of nature; those who enjoy him and understand him must approach him in this respect more or less remotely, or they would neither understand nor enjoy. But to know is one thing, and to

tell with convincing effect quite another. A man may have a stable full of horses, and not be able to drive four-in-hand.

If by power of expression I meant merely the ability to write with clearness, force, and beauty-with whatever clearness, whatever force, whatever beauty that which is both wise and interesting, I should be saying, indeed, what is true, but I should not present any new view of Shakespeare's genius. His peculiar power in this regard was that of uniting poetical beauty, the charm of fancy and of language, with the utterance of that intuitive knowledge which, in the words of his contemporary critic, makes his writings "serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives." I can here give by examples but hints and suggestions of what I mean:

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."

"Spirits are not finely touch'd But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor Both thanks and use."

"But 't is a common proof That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; But when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend."

"What custom wills, in all things should we do 't,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mountainous error be too highly piled
For truth to overpeer."

"O good Horatio, what a wounded name,

Things standing thus unknown, shall leave behind me!

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

is unsurpassed by any other from Shakespeare's pen. These passages are mere chance-remembered examples of a multitude like the pebbles 66 on the unnumbered beach" which constitute, in my judgment, their writer's peculiar claim upon the attention of the world, his peculiar charm to the world's ear. Leave him his truth and strength of characterization, his vividness of dramatic speech and action, his imagination, his pathos, his humor, his power in the tender and his power in the terrible, in all of which qualities he is unsurpassed, and in most of which he is unequaled; but take from him his specialty of using language in such a way as to make poetry a comment upon all the actions of our lives, and us conscious of wit and wisdom in his presence, do this, and the Shakespeare supreme, the unapproachable, is gone. Shakespeare's mind surely had in it something of the quality which, having no other name for it, we call divine; for it seems to have been an exhaustless source of knowledge, of wisdom, and of beauty. Yet something it had very human, too, and sometimes very weak and poor; mortal error and mere human dross. But let us scorn the affectation that would say, Were it not so he would be too good and great for sympathy and love. Nothing is too good and great for man to love and worship, although, like the greatest intellect the world has seen, he may sometimes weakly or wickedly fall away from what he knows that he should love and worship.

Shakespeare in his supremacy stands. far above the deterioration of his weaknesses and the contamination of his faults. The high-heaved peak of his

pain,

To tell my story."

And see that speech in Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 3, beginning, "Time hath my lord a wallet," etc., which in its union of wisdom, beauty, and richness of thought and utterance

no less dazzling pure, no less goldentouched with light of heaven, because of fens and marshes at its base. Around it his great thoughts sweep on mighty wings, none the less majestic because there are foul and venomous creatures creeping below. To him our eyes turn

such as transcends

when we need such counsel, such comfort, such delight, as surpasses that which seems mere counsel, mere comfort, mere delight, all other moral good and mental pleasure. The more we know him, the more we find him not quite all knowable. He is the only writer who can be to us in one brief half hour our jester, our singer, our friend, our consoler, our prophet (but never our priest), our sage, - ourselves. There is no mood of our lives that was not a mood of his mind; no sorrow or joy of our hearts that was not a sorrow or a joy of his brain. His intellect was the abstract of humanity. His is the only fame enrolled upon the ages which is not only without a rival, but which

no one would hope to rival. The chosen people had only three kings, each of whom was preeminent for certain qualities. Shakespeare in his intellectual royalty suggests them all. The Saul of literature, he stands head and shoulders above even the brothers of his kingly blood; like David, he is the poet of a race and yet of all races, and moreover one who, seeking the means of content, found the crown of immortality; like Solomon, he is wise with a wisdom which has enlightened the whole world. Like each and all of these who must be united to be his prototype, he is not without faults that would condemn him to death, were he not so great that he is above either punishment or pardon.

Richard Grant White.

THERE is a lively interest among students of history and society in the uncovering of rubbish heaps, and the reconstruction of village communities out of institutional hints. I have found my pleasure in unearthing the villages and farms and pasture-lands and battle-fields which lie under my maple-trees. Every year the busy life goes on there, whether I watch it or not; it is a microcosm of that world which my daily newspaper reports; for here among the ants are the builders of cities, the governors and leaders, the masters of slaves, the harvesters, the herdsmen, and the mechanics. No emancipation proclamation has yet been issued, but there are wars and rumors of wars. Failing to discover the official records of these busy creatures - too busy, may be, to trouble themselves about history I have kept a journal of my observations. I have had, moreover, the opportunity of comparing the observations which I have made under my Northern

maple trees with what I have seen at the South, and I record with pleasure the fact that there is more common ground of pursuit between the two sections than some would have us believe. Naturalists have given us the impression that no harvesting ants are to be found at the North. They are mistaken. Familiar as I am with those of the South, I have never found a more interesting species than one at the North, Pheidole pennsylvanica, a large colony, whose subterranean city is beneath the spreading branches of a maple in near proximity to my house, affording an excellent opportunity to observe its habits.

The colony is composed of males and females and two sets of neuters, consisting of soldiers and workers, each set widely differing from the other in looks and occupation. The soldiers are at once recognized by their superior size and large heads, and they take no part in the ordinary work of the community. The workers are much smaller than the