deep--which does not exist in a looking-glass. "The best in this kind
are but shadows." No German commentator has ever made an adequate note
on that. Nevertheless, Shakespeare was an Englishman; he was nowhere
more English than in his blunders; but he was nowhere more successful
than in the description of very English types of character. And if
anything is to be said about Hamlet, beyond what Shakespeare has said
about him, I should say that Hamlet was an Englishman too. He was as
much an Englishman as he was a gentleman, and he had the very grave
weaknesses of both characters. The chief English fault, especially in
the nineteenth century, has been lack of decision, not only lack of
decision in action, but lack of the equally essential decision in
thought--which some call dogma. And in the politics of the last century,
this English Hamlet, as we shall see, played a great part, or rather
refused to play it.

There were, then, two elements in the German influence; a sort of pretty
playing with terror and a solemn recognition of terrorism. The first
pointed to elfland, and the second to--shall we say, Prussia. And by
that unconscious symbolism with which all this story develops, it was
soon to be dramatically tested, by a definite political query, whether
what we really respected was the Teutonic fantasy or the Teutonic fear.

The Germanisation of England, its transition and turning-point, was well
typified by the genius of Carlyle. The original charm of Germany had
been the charm of the child. The Teutons were never so great as when
they were childish; in their religious art and popular imagery the
Christ-Child is really a child, though the Christ is hardly a man. The
self-conscious fuss of their pedagogy is half-redeemed by the
unconscious grace which called a school not a seed-plot of citizens, but
merely a garden of children. All the first and best forest-spirit is