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other leading dramatists were university men. Ben Jonson, many years after, when, on Shakespeare's decease, he bore almost generous testimony to his genius, wondered, no doubt, that he had grown to such stature, seeing that he had "little Latin and less Greek." Ben had too much Latin and Greek, that is, Stalwart more than he had inward juice to assimilate, his "classic" learning coming away from him in undigested lumps. Had Shakespeare happened to have taken in more Latin and Greek than even Jonson himself, it would have been thoroughly fused and incorporated, turned first into healthy chyle, then into blood, his learning mixing with, melted into, knowledge, and his knowledge kept nimble by use, strengthened and enlarged by new currents from within and without, especially from within.

In 1572 died Robert Greene, author of a Henry VI., which Shakespeare had lately worked over. Greene left in manuscript a work entitled A Groat's worth of Wit, bought with a million of repentance. Three months after Greene's death this work, purporting to have been written during his last illness, was published by Henry Chettle, also a dramatist. The book was prefaced by an address from Greene:

"To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, who spend their wit in making Plays." The following is the important part of the passage in this address which relates to Shakespeare: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank-verse as the best of you and being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in a country. Oh! that I might entreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions."

Among the dramatists of that day there ap-\ pears to have been something like a community of literary goods. Each one appropriated to his present use whatever suited his purpose. The practice must have been generally countenanced, and not deemed dishonest. There is no uncertainty, we believe, as to the priority. of Greene in Henry VI. Some critics ascribe the first Henry VI. jointly to Marlowe, Greene, and Peele. Except on this theory, we cannot account for Shakespeare's having seized upon Greene's handiwork and headwork during

Greene's life, and by his imposed partnership, while shaping his neighbor's scenes into less prosaic forms, saving himself much labor. No wonder that poor Greene in his last moments fired a shot at the "upstart crow." Greene was probably one of the least poetical among his contemporary dramatists; his name is not among the twenty-five whom Lamb thought worthy of being included in his Specimens. Shakespeare, in this case as in others, looked upon as legal booty whatever he by his touch could improve. He thus availed himself of an intellectual and literary right, that any fact or material, no matter where found, is open to the use and appropriation of him who has the genius to turn it to best account.

Charles Lamb, in a note to a passage from Decker on the Happy Man, says: "The turn of this is the same with Iago's definition of a Deserving Woman, 'She that was ever fair and never proud' etc: the matter is superior."

The lines put into Iago's mouth, if they be not in weight of matter equal to those of Decker, are less prosaic and are perfectly suited to their place. Lamb jumps at any opportunity, by a choice passage or scene, to bring, if only for a moment, one of the "Contemporaries" to

the side of Shakespeare. To show fully what they all are combined, in comparison with Shakespeare, an effective way would be to extract from Shakespeare's plays the same kind and quantity of passages and scenes that Lamb has culled from the best plays of twenty-five dramatists. We should then have a convincing view of the difference between the ever radiating and ever sparkling glow of a mass heated from within by deep unintermitted heartwarmth, intensified while refined by poetically imaginative light, and the fitful shooting forth of flame from a mass less interiorly heated, and more lighted by the superficial play of fancy than by inward beams of poetic imagination. And this contrast is heightened by the thought, that for the one mass the warmth is supplied by a single mind, in the other by more than a score of minds.

To me it has always seemed that the "old dramatists" contemporary with Shakespeare have been, and continue to be, overrated. Coleridge, seventy years ago, and Mr. Swinburne, recently, are the brilliant poetic representatives of this overestimation. The late revival of interest in them is commendable; for, whatever may be the final enlightened judgment as to

their intrinsic worth, they have a high historic value. Editions of several of the most celebrated have been issued. Certain scholars and book-buyers put these on their shelves; but what is the proportion of readers to buyers? Among the few who read them, who reads them twice? You grant a certain importance to them as acquaintance, but you are not drawn into intimacy with them. You cannot make a friend of any of their personages. These lack refinement, and individuality, and wholeness, and a still greater bar to your taking one of them into your heart for a lifelong friend, they themselves lack heart.

In every department of human endeavor, all through the annals of mankind, supreme men are very rare. It is not surprising, therefore, that but one man of that strong age should have had the divine plenitude of power that Shakespeare had. As for his contemporaries, the best of them want the deep basis of dramatic competency, lively, sure, moral sense. With this, and partly as effect of this, is want of refinement. Moreover, in comparison with Shakespeare, they want both intellectual nimbleness and intellectual reach. They want and this is their most damaging want-spirit