other difference to be noted between the two men in respect of that very circumstance of their marked similarity in one characteristic which has led us to view them together. Shakespeare’s boundless ease and fluency in writing did not prevent perfection in his literary execution. His grammar, with all its impetuosity and lightness of spring, is logical and accurate to the utmost demands of the most fastidious English scholarship; and, though he would have repudiated with scorn the name “stylist,” invented of late as a title of literary honour by some of our critics, and it would be profane to think of him under that execrable and disastrous appellation, he wrote always with the sure cunning of a disciplined artist in verbal expression,—an artist so highly self-disciplined that his art in such matters had become an instinct. Scott’s habitual style, on the other hand,—his style when he is not strongly moved either by vehement feeling or by high poetic conception,—is a kind of homely and comfortable slipshod, neglectful of any rule of extreme accuracy, and careless even of the most obvious grammatical solecisms. It is not exactly with reference to this difference between himself and Shakespeare that there occurs in one passage in his Diary a protest against being compared with Shakespeare at all. But the protest is worth quoting. “_Like_ Shakespeare!” he exclaims, noticing the already formed habit of this perilous comparison among his most ardent admirers in his own lifetime,—“_like_ Shakespeare! Not fit to tie his brogues!” It was the superlative of compliment on Scott’s side; but its very wording may be construed into a certain significance in connection with that point of dissimilarity between the two men to which I have just adverted. Shakespeare never wore “brogues.” In our present metaphorical sense, I mean; in the literal sense, I would not be sure but he may have found such articles convenient quite as often as Scott did. There were muddy roads about Stratford-on-Avon as well as about Abbotsford.