Now all these sorts of parallels between Shakespeare and the Greeks are, Mr. Collins tells us, not to count as proofs that Shakespeare knew the Greek tragedians. “We have obviously to be on our guard” {77a} against three kinds of such parallels, which “may be mere coincidences,” {77b} fortuitous coincidences. But these coincidences against which “we must be on our guard” fill sixteen pages (pp. 46–63). These pages must necessarily produce a considerable effect in the way of persuading the reader that Shakespeare knew the Greek tragedians as intimately as Mr. Collins did. Mr. Greenwood is obliged to leave these parallels to readers of Mr. Collins’s essay. Indeed, what more can we do? Who would read through a criticism of each instance? Two or three may be given. The Queen in _Hamlet_ reminds that prince, grieving for his father’s death, that “all that live must die”: “That loss is common to the race, And common is the common-place.” The Greek Chorus offers the commonplace to Electra,—and here is a parallel! Again, two Greeks agree with Shakespeare that anxious expectation of evil is worse than actual experience thereof. Greece agrees with Shakespeare that ill-gotten gains do not thrive, or that it is not lucky to be “a corby messenger” of bad news; or that all goes ill when a man acts against his better nature; or that we suffer most from the harm which we bring on ourselves; or that there is strength in a righteous cause; or that blood calls for blood (an idea common to Semites, Greeks, and English readers of the Bible); or that, having lost a very good man, you will not soon see his like again,—and so on as long as you please. Of such wisdom are proverbs made, and savages and Europeans have many parallel proverbs. _Vestigia nulla retrorsum_ is as well known to Bushmen as to Latinists. Manifestly nothing in this kind proves, or even suggests, that Shakespeare was saturated in Greek tragedy. But page on page of such facts as that both Shakespeare and Sophocles talk, one of “the belly-pinched wolf,” the other of “the empty-bellied wolf,” are apt to impress the reader—and verily both Shakespeare and Æschylus talk of “the heart dancing for joy.” Mr. Collins repeats that such things are no proof, but he keeps on piling them up. It was a theory of Shakespeare’s time that the apparent ghost of a dead man might be an impersonation of him by the devil. Hamlet knows this— “The spirit that I have seen may be the devil.” Orestes (_Electra_, Euripides) asks whether it may not be an avenging dæmon (_alastor_) in the shape of a god, that bids him avenge his father. Is Shakespeare borrowing from Euripides, or from a sermon, or any contemporary work on ghosts, such as that of Lavater? A girl dies or is sacrificed before her marriage, and characters in _Romeo and Juliet_, and in Euripides, both say that Death is her bridegroom. Anyone might say that, anywhere, as in the Greek Anthology—