No, we do not exaggerate. Here are M. Taine’s words: “Hamlet, it will be said, is half-mad; this explains his vehemence of expression. The truth is that Hamlet here is Shakespeare” (p. 308). “Hamlet is Shakespeare, and, at the close of this gallery of portraits, which have all some features of his own, Shakespeare has painted himself in the most striking of all” (p. 340). Things equal to the same are equal to each other. Lara being George Gordon Noel Byron, and Conrad also being the same George, we see at once why there exists a striking resemblance between them; but when we are told that Hamlet and Falstaff, morally as far apart as the poles, are yet painted from the same model, we find that too much is asked of our credulity. Of Falstaff M. Taine says: “This big, pot-bellied fellow, a coward, a jester, a brawler, a drunkard, a lewd rascal, a pot-house poet, is one of Shakespeare’s favorites. The reason is that his manners are those of pure nature, and _Shakespeare’s mind is congenial with his own_” (p. 323). Wherein this “drunkard and lewd rascal” resembles Prince Hamlet, and wherein Shakespeare resembles either or both of them, is beyond the range of any Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic mind to comprehend. Perhaps M. Taine may be able to explain it. His book totally fails to do so. No one can read this long chapter of fifty-five octavo pages on Shakespeare without being struck by the skill with which the author avoids mention of or reference to the dramatist’s most admirable passages, and also by his elaborate and painstaking exposition of the defects of Shakespeare’s inferior characters. Of the beauties of Romeo and Juliet--the Queen Mab description alone excepted--we hear nothing, but are regaled with two pages concerning “the most complete of all these characters--the nurse,” and a long and severe commentary on her “never-ending gossip’s babble.”[11] The same remark may be made of Hamlet, a play of which M. Taine evidently has no comprehension, if Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb, Ulrici, Tieck, Goethe, and Schlegel at all understand it. Concerning Othello, many paragraphs are frittered away in small criticism on the characters of Iago and Cassio. Of the grand features of Othello the reader obtains no glimpse, while a scandalous industry is exercised in bringing out from under the cover of obscure texts shocking pruriencies that are not perceived by the average reader of Shakespeare. We may be told that tastes differ, that what through tradition or habit, perhaps, to us appear beauties, do not so strike a foreigner. Let us test this by the criticism of another foreigner--not a German, but a Frenchman--and we will find him selecting, as prominent beauties on the first hearing of the play, the very passages which also strike us on long and familiar acquaintance.