continuance was a type and prognostic of the perpetual endurance of his sway. [Sidenote: Gloster (Ric. III.) was early, Shylock and Hamlet of middle time, Lear in ripe age, _The Tempest_, near his death.] The cold and fiendish Gloster was an early conception; the eager Shylock and the superhuman Hamlet were imagined simultaneously not long afterwards; the tenderness of Lear was the fruit of the poet's ripest age; and one of the closing years of his life gave birth to the savage wildness and the youthful and aerial beauty of 'The Tempest.' * * * * * [Sidenote: Are you convinc't that Shakspere wrote much of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_?] Our last words are claimed by the proper subject of our inquiry. Have I convinced you that in the composition of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen', Shakspeare had the extensive participation which I have ascribed to him? It is very probable that my reasoning is in many parts defective; but I place so much confidence in the goodness of the cause itself, that I would unhesitatingly leave the question, without a word of argument, to be determined by any one, possessing a familiar acquaintance with both the poets whose claims are to be balanced, and an ordinarily acute discernment of their distinguishing qualities. [Sidenote: I'm sure the question needs only attention.] I am firmly persuaded that the subject needs only to have attention directed to it; and my investigation of it cannot have been a failure in every particular. [Sidenote: The external evidence doesn't include the internal.] The circumstances attending the first publication of the drama do not, in the most unfavourable view which can with any fairness be taken of them, exclude us from deciding the question of Shakspeare's authorship by an examination of the work itself: and it is unnecessary that the effect of the external evidence should be estimated one step higher. [Sidenote: Does that give all the play to Fletcher?] Do the internal proofs allot all to Fletcher, or assign any share to Shakspeare? [Sidenote: The Story is alien to Fletcher] The Story is ill-suited for the dramatic purposes [107:1]of the one poet, and belongs to a class of subjects at variance with his style of thought, and not elsewhere chosen by him or any author of the school to which he belonged; both the individual and the class accord with the whole temper and all the purposes of the other poet, and the class is one from which he has repeatedly selected themes. [Sidenote: Fletcher can't have chosen the subject of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_; nor was its plan his.] It is next to impossible that Fletcher can have selected the subject; it is not unlikely that Shakspeare may have suggested it; and if the execution of the plan shall be thought to evince that he was in any degree connected with the work, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that it was by him that the subject was chosen. The proof here, (which I think has not been noticed by any one before me,)