[Footnote 1:  Scot, Introduction.]

[Footnote 2:  Foxe, iv. p. 694.]

116.  Now, perhaps one of the most distinctive marks of literary genius is a certain receptivity of mind; a capability of receiving impressions from all surrounding circumstance—­of extracting from all sources, whether from nature or man, consciously or unconsciously, the material upon which it shall work.  For this process to be perfectly accomplished, an entire and enthusiastic sympathy with man and the current ideas of the time is absolutely essential, and in proportion as this sympathy is contracted and partial, so will the work produced be stunted and untrue; and, on the other hand, the more universal and entire it is, the more perfect and vital will be the art.  Bearing this in mind, and also the facts that Shakspere’s early training was effected in a little country village; that upon the verge of manhood, he came to London, where he spent his prime in contact with the bustle and friction of busy town life; and that the later years of his life were passed in the quiet retirement of the home of his boyhood—­there would be good ground for an argument, a priori, even were there none of a more conclusive nature, that his earlier works would be found impregnated with the country fairy-myths with which his youth would come in contact; that the result of the labours of his middle life would show that these earlier reminiscenses had been gradually obliterated by the gloomier influence of ideas that were the result of the struggle of opposed theories that had not then ceased to rage in the towns, and that the diabolic element and questions relating thereto would predominate; and that, finally, his later works, written under the calmer influence of Stratford life, would show a certain return to the fairy-lore of his earlier years.

117.  But fortunately we are not left to rely upon any such hypothetical evidence in this matter, however probable it may appear.  Although the general reading public cannot be asked to accept as infallible any chronological order of Shakspere’s plays that dogmatically asserts a particular sequence, or to investigate the somewhat dry and specialist arguments upon which the conclusions are founded, yet there are certain groupings into periods which are agreed upon as accurate by nearly all critics, and which, without the slightest danger of error, may be asserted to be correct.  For instance, it is indisputable that “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” “The Comedy of Errors,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” are amongst Shakspere’s earliest works; that the tragedies of “Julius Caesar,” “Hamlet,” “Othello,” “Macbeth,” and “Lear” are the productions of his middle life, between 1600 and 1606; and that “A Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest” are amongst the latest plays which he wrote.[1] Here we have everything that is required to prove the question in hand.  At the commencement and at the end of his writings—­when a youth fresh from the