some of his persons, indeed, Shakespeare is as Nature herself,
all-inclusive; but in others--and chiefly in comedy--he is partial, he is
impressionary, he refuses to know what is not to his purpose, he is light-
heartedly capricious. And in that gay, wilful world it is that he gives
us--or used to give us, for even the word is obsolete--the pleasure of
_oubliance_.

Now this fugitive writer has not been so swift but that I have caught him
a clout as he went. Yet he will do it again; and those like-minded will
assuredly also continue to show how much more completely human, how much
more sensitive, how much more responsible, is the art of the critic than
the world has ever dreamt till now. And, superior in so much, they will
still count their importunate sensibility as the choicest of their gifts.
And Lepidus, who loves to wonder, can have no better subject for his
admiration than the pathos of the time. It is bred now of your mud by
the operation of your sun. 'Tis a strange serpent; and the tears of it
are wet.




ANIMA PELLEGRINA!


Every language in the world has its own phrase, fresh for the stranger's
fresh and alien sense of its signal significance; a phrase that is its
own essential possession, and yet is dearer to the speaker of other
tongues. Easily--shall I say cheaply?--spiritual, for example, was the
nation that devised the name _anima pellegrina_, wherewith to crown a
creature admired. "Pilgrim soul" is a phrase for any language, but