dity is falling, partly because the realistic tendency of our age is inclined to consider all aesthetic criticism and philo- sophy, all ideas and regulating conceptions, as mere freaks of the imagination... Aesthetic criticism views the artistic work purely by itself, and endeavours to understand it simply by the power of perceptive thought, and to point out its meaning from within itself“. It ought to do so, but how difficult it is, has already been hinted at, and will be shown by some quotations. Grillparzer(Sh. Jahrbuch XVIII, 1883, Grill- parzers Sh.-Studien. Mitgeteilt von Wilh. Bolin) says:„But with this extending interest for the great poet, the literature of commentaries sprang up, which, from Franz Horn and Tieck to Gervinus, has taken all pains possible to render the most intelligible of all poets unintelligible... With a favourite author of a remote period, they(the romantic school) are in the relation of a man to a child, richly gifted, that they admire, and to whom they feel superior at the same time, which is a gratification as well to their love of art, as to their vanity. The principal treat for the admirers of Shake- speare is to put in things of their own, that never will enter into the head of all other men“. F. A. Leo(Sh. Jahr- buch XV, 1880, S. 8) says:„As every man feels to be in the presence of his own god, and presses the stamp of his individuality upon the revealed god, thus between every reader and the poet's persons a personal relation springs up. In one point only these readers differ from one another; the greater number keep their conceptions in their heads, or unconsciously in their hearts, and keep them chaste, as a girl does her first love; a smaller number, but of great weight, feel the vocation to go forth as apostles, and to preach to the heathens; and what confusion do they cause! Since there is no positive truth in these things, the individual opinion is truth for every one, and if an interpretation of Hamlet were doubtlessly false, and acknowledged to be so by all parties, it yet is just for the individual in whose head it has taken birth“. Mézières says(Shakespeare. ses oeuvres et ses Critiques, VIII) that books have been written on