For M. Taine, the grand trial act in the Merchant of Venice is “the horrible scene in which Shylock brandished his butcher’s knife before Antonio’s bare breast,” and King Lear is “the supreme effort of pure imagination, a disease of reason which reason could never have conceived.” But reason has so decidedly done the contrary that an experienced physician of long practice in an insane asylum (in the United States) has written an essay[12] to show that Shakespeare’s physiological and psychological knowledge and acquirements, as displayed in his tragedies, were in advance of those of his age by fully two centuries, and, he adds, that the wonderful skill and sagacity manifested by the great dramatist in seizing upon the premonitory signs of insanity (as in King Lear), which are usually overlooked by all, even the patient’s most intimate friends and the members of his family, and weaving them into the character of his hero as a necessary element, without which it would be incomplete, like those of inferior artists, is a matter of wonder to all modern psychologists. To the Voltairian school of literature in the last century, the plays of Shakespeare were “_ces monstrueuses farces que l’on appelle des tragedies_,” and Hamlet, in particular, in Voltaire’s judgment, “_seems the work of a drunken savage_.” When you have read M. Taine on Shakespeare, first let the coruscations of his verbal pyrotechnics subside, await the end of his epileptic contortions of style, then scratch off a thin varnish of polite concession, and you will find under it a Voltairian: although not, we hope, brutal and cynical as was the great original in his denunciation of those Frenchmen who were willing to claim some talent for Shakespeare. Voltaire called them _faquins_, _impudents_, _imbéciles_, _monstres_, etc. Such people were, he said, a source of _calamity and horror_, and France did not contain a sufficient number of pillories to punish _such a crime_. (“Letter of Voltaire to Count d’Argental,” July 19, 1776.) One of the most interesting books to be found in the English language is Carlyle’s _French Revolution_. But it is interesting only on condition that the reader is already familiar with the history of that period. And we pay M. Taine’s work a high compliment in saying that, in like manner, his _History of English Literature_ will be found an interesting work to those whose opinions on art and literature are formed, whose religious principles are fixed, and whose judgments are sufficiently mature to be in no danger of being affected by the artificial, erroneous, and false views of man and his responsibilities, with which the book abounds. FOOTNOTES: [1] _History of English Literature._ By H. A. Taine. Translated by H. Van Laun. With a Preface prepared expressly for this Translation by the author. New York: Holt & Williams. 1871. [2] Literal translation of the original falls thus into English rhythm: