Introductory remark.

From an essay intending to put Shakespeare students in mind of what every Shakespeare scholar knows well enough, but what a student perusing his favourite critic, and captivated by the amount of learning and ingenuity displayed there, may forget, viz. that the sorts of evidence which enable us to arrange Shakespeare's plays in chrono- logical order, such as dates of printing, allusions in the plays, metre, language and style, power of characterization, etc., etc. do not lead to any sure result,— an essay which tries to do this, placing, side by side, as much as possible with their own words, the contradictory opinions of eminent critics.— I choose a chapter only according to the space allotted to me here.

Power of characterization.

The reader of a poet's works mostly will receive an impression about the age of his author, may the latter eversomuch keep in the background and never intrude upon him by moralizing and reflecting. According to the reader's own age and bent of mind, he will be attracted by a certain writer, or by a certain epoch in his author's writings.

C. Hebler makes the excellent remark:„Goethe's cha- racters reflect his own self; Schiller's, in the first place,