too familiar to English youth. Equally futile and equally misleading is the practice of encouraging the getting by heart of conjectural emendations which are mere impertinences. What is required, for example, in the (a) section of question two is Johnson's wholly unnecessary conjecture "may," what is required in (b) is Rowe's flat and contemptible correction "hail;" and what is required in (e) is the reproduction of the nonsense of Mason, Bailey, and Singleton. If teachers and those who write books for the instruction of teachers could only be brought to feel that the text of a great poet should be as sacred as his memory, education would greatly gain.

But to continue: The third question, intended no doubt to secure an original acquaintance with the play, is either wholly superfluous -for much more effective tests could easily have been applied-or places a premium on the exercise of the least intelligent faculty of the mind--local memory. To questions four and five-if we accept at least the condition with which the fifth is saddled--no objections could of course be made. The attainment of such information as they are designed to secure is obviously as essential as it is important. With regard to the sixth, it is chiefly to be regretted that it is the only question' of its kind, and with regard to the seventh that it did not supply the, deficiency. It is clear, then, that the study of a a play of Shakespeare-and what applies to a play of Shakespeare applies obviously to any other work in poetry-which runs on the lines indicated in these questions would serve only to attain one of the ends at which the interpretation of literature should aim. It would secure an exact knowledge of the history and meaning of words; it would secure a clear understanding of all that pertains in the mechanism of expression to grammar and syntax, and of all that pertains in the accidents of expression to local and particular allusions. But it would go no further. The questions which ought to form an essential part of every examination not merely elementary in which a play of Shakespeare is offered, are questions requiring an intelligent study of its general structure, of the evolution of its plot, of its style and diction not simply in their relation to grammar, but in their relation to rhetoric, of its ethics, of its metaphysics, of its characters, of the influences, precedent and contemporary, which importantly affected it. It would be quite as easy to substitute for such questions as I have transcribed some such questions as these :—

"1. Through what phases did the style of Shakespeare pass? Analyze the characteristics of each phase in its development, and discuss his general claim to be called 'a consummate master of expression.'-2. Is Macbeth to be regarded as a responsible agent? If so, how does the drama illustrate Shakespeare's ethics? If not, what light does it throw on Shakespeare's theology?-3. Analyze and contrast the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.-4. Point out the exquisite propriety from a dramatic point of view of (a) the porter's speech and (b) Macbeth's soliloquy in the dagger scene, and point out in the play what strike you as being particularly subtle dramatic touches. Explain your reasons for thinking them so.'

Or suppose we make the questions assume the form which they should assume in a comparative study of classical and modern literature.

1. Show in what way and through what media Attic tragedy determined the form of our Romantic tragedy, and show by a comparative review of the Perse and Henry V., and of the Agamemnon and Macbeth how much Attic and Shakespearean drama have in common.-2. Compare Shakespeare and Sophocles (a) as dramatic artists, (b) as critics of life. Discuss particularly their use of irony.-3. Point out how far the typical tragedies of Shakespeare illustrate Aristotle's analysis of the structure, characterization and functions of tragedy. In what respects has Shakespeare violated Aristotle's canons ?

I am not proposing these questions as models; I am merely showing the necessity of directing attention to such points as they touch on, if the study of Shakespeare or of any other master poet is to be of profit in popular, or in academic education. There is moreover no lack of excellent guides. We have the Lectures of Coleridge, the Commentaries of Gervinus and Ulrici, Kreyssig's Vorlesungen ueber Shakespeare, Professor Dowden's suggestive little volume, and innumerable other works. And it would be well if, in every examination where the Clarendon Press edition of a play of Shakespeare is prescribed as a text-book, it should be prescribed only under the condition that its introduction and notes were supplemented by reference to these and similar works. It is, indeed, only one of the many proofs of the anarchy which exists in the English department of education, that the same press a press which virtually directs the study of our national literature in almost every school in the kingdom should be simultaneously issuing editions of English poets, edited on such principles as Hamlet and Macbeth are edited, and editions of English poets edited as Mark Pattison has edited the Essay on Man and the Satires of Pope.

But, it may be said, though criticism in its application to solid subjects, like a drama of Shakespeare or the Satires of Pope, is, in teaching, practicable enough, it becomes in its application to less tangible subjects-to lyric poetry, for example-eminently impracticable. What end could be served by dissecting Christabel, or by proceeding categorically through the merits and defects of Epipsychi dion? No one would deny that the spectacle of a lecturer with Tears, Idle Tears, or Mariana in the Moated Grange in his hand "proceeding to show" what is graceful, what is fanciful, what is pathetic, would be sufficiently ludicrous and repulsive. But the soundness of a principle is not affected by the possibility of reducing it to an absurdity. It still remains that of all the functions of the literary teacher none is more important than the function which lends itself thus easily to ridicule. And what is that function! It is the interpretation of power and beauty as they reveal themselves

in language, not simply by resolving them into their constituent elements, but by considering them in their relation to principles. While an incompetent teacher traces no connection between phenomena and laws, and confounds accidents with essences, blundering among "categorical enumerations" and vague generalities, he who knows will show us how to discern harmony in apparent discord, and discord in apparent harmony. In the gigantic proportions of Paradise Lost he will reveal to us a symmetry as perfect as in the most finished of Horace's Odes. He will expose flaws, interstices and incongruity where, as in the Essay on Man, all is to the unskilled eye consistency and unity. He will teach us to hear in the choked and turbid rush of Shakespeare's ruggedest utterances a truer and subtler music than in the most mellifluous cadences of Pope.

Nor will he confine himself to interpreting what is excellent and what is vicious in form and style. Rightly distinguishing between the criticism which should be simply suggestive and the criticism which should be directly didactic, he will abstain from impertinent prattle about the effects produced by poetry, to show how far in each case the effects produced might, with a larger insight and a fuller understanding, have been heightened and intensified; or how, on the other hand, such effects ought not, and, in the case of a critic whose ethic and æsthetic education had been sound, could not have been produced at all. He will teach us to see in all poetry, not purely lyrical or simply fanciful, a criticism of life, sound or unsound, adequate or defective. And if in dealing with such luminaries as Chaucer and Spenser, as Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, his care will not extend beyond reverent exposition; in dealing with the lesser lights, with our Drydens and our Popes, with our Byrons and our Shelleys, he will have another task. He will have to show how, in various degrees, defects of temper, the accidents of life, historical and social environment and the like, have obscured and distorted that vision which penetrates through the local and particular to the essential and universal. He will not, for example, allow the brilliant rhetoric and sound sense of Pope to blind us to the worthlessness of his metaphysics or to the insufficiency of his views on the subject of man's relation to spiritual truth; nor will he allow the marvelous music and imaginative splendor of the Revolt of Islam and the Prometheus Unbound to veil from us the folly and insanity of their ethics.

Thus systematized, the study of English literature would become on the one side-on the side of its history-as susceptible of serious, methodical, and profitable treatment as history itself; and on the other side-on the side of criticism-it would become a still more important instrument of discipline, for it would correspond as nearly

as possible to the Mousike of the Greeks, and supply the one great deficiency in our national education. In a country like ours, where the current will always run in a scientific and positive direction, nothing is so much to be regretted as the almost entire absence of any systematic provision for "musical culture." At the universities the want is to some extent supplied by the study of classical literature, but throughout the country our own literature must necessarily be the chief medium for disseminating that culture, if it is to be disseminated at all. Whether English literature is to fulfill this function or not depends obviously on the training of its teachers, and the training of its teachers depends as obviously on the willingness or the unwillingness of the universities to provide that training. How far that training is likely to be provided by such an institution as the Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos of Cambridge we have already seen. What is to be devoutly hoped is that Convocation will have the wisdom to prevent Oxford from the folly of being guilty of similar treason to the cause of Letters and Culture.— J.CHURTON COLLINS, in The Nineteenth Century.

CHARLES DARWIN.

BORN FEBRUARY 12, 1809; DIED APRIL 19, 1882.

By the universal consent of mankind, the name of Charles Darwin was placed even during his lifetime among those of the few great leaders who stand forth for all time as the creative spirits who have founded and legislated for the realm of Science. It is too soon to estimate with precision the full value and effect of his work. The din of controversy that rose around him has hardly yet died down, and the influence of the doctrines he propounded is extending into so many remote departments of human inquiry, that a generation or two may require to pass away before his true place in the history of thought can be definitely fixed. But the judgment of his contemporaries as to his proud pre-eminence is not likely ever to be called in question. He is enrolled among Dii majorum gentium, and there he will remain to the end of the ages. When he was laid beside the illustrious dead in Westminster Abbey, there arose far and wide a lamentation as of personal bereavement. Thousands of mourners who had never seen him, who knew only his writings, and judged of the gentleness and courtesy of his nature from these and from such hearsay reports as passed outwards from the privacy of his country home, grieved as for the loss of a dear friend. It is remarkable that probably no scientific man of his day was personally less familiar to the mass of his fellow-countrymen. He seemed to

shun all the usual modes of contact with them. His weak health. domestic habits, and absorbing work kept him in the seclusion of his own quiet home. His face was seldom to be seen at the meet. ings of scientific societies, or at those gatherings where the discover ies of science are expounded to more popular audiences. He shrank from public controversy, although no man was ever more vigorously attacked and more completely misrepresented. Nevertheless, when he died the affectionate regret that followed him to the grave came not alone from his own personal friends, but from thousands of sympathetic mourners in all parts of the world, who had never seen or known him. Men had ample material for judging of his work, and in the end had given their judginent with general acclaim. Of the man himself, however, they could know but little, yet enough of his character shone forth in his work to indicate its tenderness and goodness. Men instinctively felt him to be in every way one of the great ones of the earth, whose removal from the living world leaves mankind poorer in moral worth as well as in intellect. So widespread has been this conviction, that the story of his life has been eagerly longed for. It would contain no eventful incidents, but it would reveal the man as he was, and show the method of his working and the secret of his greatness.

At last, five years and a half after his death, the long-expected Memoir has made its appearance. The task of preparing it was undertaken by his son, Mr. Francis Darwin, who, having for the last eight years of his father's life acted as his assistant, was especially qualified to put the world in possession of a true picture of the inner life of the great naturalist. Most biographies are too long, but, in the present case, the three goodly volumes will be found to contain not a page too much. The narrative is absorbingly interesting from first to last. The editor, with excellent judgment, allows Darwin himself, as far as possible, to tell his own story in a series of delightful letters, which bring us into the very presence of the earnest student and enthusiastic explorer of Nature.

Charles Darwin came of a family which from the beginning of the sixteenth century had been settled on the northern borders of Lincolnshire. Several of his ancestors had been men of literary taste and scientific culture, the most noted of them being his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, the poet and philosopher. His father was a medical man in large practice at Shrewsbury, and his mother, a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of the Etruria Works. Some interesting reminiscences are given of the father, who must have been a man of uncommon strength of character. He left a large fortune, and thus provided for the career which his son was destined to fulfil. Of his own early life and later years, Darwin has left a light but most interesting sketch in an autobiographical fragment,