_Hamlet_ would never offend his audience by an injudicious
performance."

I have no more to urge against writing of this order than that it has
passed out of fashion, and that something different might reasonably
have been looked for in a volume that bears the date 1894 on its
title-page. The public owes Messrs. Bell & Sons a heavy debt; but at
the same time the public has a peculiar interest in such a series as
that of _The Aldine Poets_. A purchaser who finds several of these
books to his mind, and is thereby induced to embark upon the purchase
of the entire series, must feel a natural resentment if succeeding
volumes drop below the implied standard. He cannot go back: and to
omit the offending volumes is to spoil his set. And I contend that the
action taken by Messrs. Bell & Sons in improving several of their more
or less obsolete editions will only be entirely praiseworthy if we may
take it as an earnest of their desire to place the whole series on a
level with contemporary knowledge and criticism.

Nor can anyone who knows how much the industry and enthusiasm of Dyce
did, in his day, for the study of Shakespeare, do more than urge that
while, viewed historically, Dyce's criticism is entirely respectable,
it happens to be a trifle belated in the year 1894. The points of
difference between him and Charles Lamb are perhaps too obvious to
need indication; but we may sum them up by saying that whereas Lamb,
being a genius, belongs to all time, Dyce, being but an industrious
person, belongs to a period. It was a period of rapid development, no
doubt--how rapid we may learn for ourselves by the easy process of
taking down Volume V. of Chalmers's "English Poets," and turning to
that immortal passage on Shakespeare's poems which Chalmers put forth
in the year 1810:--