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seems that, in his later years, he had lost the fine tact for what was the measure and limit of his art, which(except in his first youthful deviations, as in Titus Andronicus, Henry VI., and others) had invariably been such a safe guide to him, and that, as in his youth, he had allowed himself to be carried away by the state of his own mind and fee- lings. When we compare this tragedy with his other, and pro- bably his latest works, it can scarcely be disputed that his view of life must, in his later years, have become more and more melancholy. Even in Macbeth the conciliatory element of tragedy, the mild splendour of the setting sun, such as is spread over Romeo's, Lear's, and Hamlet's death, is removed far into the background. There hangs over the Winter's Tale, over Cymbeline, the Tempest, and even over Measure for Measure a profound, solemn earnestness of feeling. The shadows continue to become deeper, till finally in Timon of Athens, we have the full darkness of night, and it is only beyond the scenes of the play, as beyond human existence, that we behold the cheerful light of day.

It would be difficult to describe misanthropy with such vigour and truth, without having experienced the feeling oneself... He was doomed to see how that upon which he had lavishly spent all his mental energy was profaned and soiled by rude hands; doomed to see how the idea of beauty — as it presented itself to his mind, and with it the poe- tical power and depth of that view of life in which he had himself lived, and which he believed he had found to con- tain truth— was not merely driven out of the spirit of the age, but that the nation itself became more and more degenerate, both morally and politically... Well, then, might the tone of his mind become a shrill dissonance, which he would then endeavour to embody in a corresponding and hurriedly sketched work, in order to shake it from his own soul. This seems to me confirmed, in addition to the general character of the whole drama, more especially by the strong satirical and cutting attacks upon a mercenary art, whose sole object was profit and success, and which was slavishly