He ends by a subtle passage, not fully worked out, indicating that as unity of impression in a work of art is its perfect virtue, and as lyrical poetry is the best vehicle for such unity, then “a play attains artistic perfection just in proportion as it approaches that unity of lyrical effect, as if a song or ballad were still lying at the root of it.” In these Shakespearian studies, produced at points so far apart in Pater’s life, the chief interest is that he should have approached Shakespeare at all. It is after all another testimony to the width and largeness of Shakespeare’s mind, that it should have forced an expression of admiration from a spirit so introspective, so definite in its range, so preoccupied with a theory, as Pater’s. Moreover, as we have seen, dramatic art had little attraction for him. One feels that he does not enter into the humanity, the profundity, of Shakespeare. He is like a man who hovers about the thickets that lie on the verge of a great forest, peeping into the glades, noting the bright flowers and the sweet notes of hidden birds, but with little desire to thread the wood or penetrate its haunted green heart. The years 1890 and 1891 were not apparently very fruitful; indeed the latter was one of the six, out of the twenty-nine years of Pater’s literary life, in which he published nothing but a review or two; but he was hard at work on his _Plato and Platonism_, which began to appear in 1892. “Prosper Mérimée” was written as a lecture in 1890, and thus belongs to the last period of Pater’s work. He begins by a melancholy summary of the century—Mérimée was born in 1803—a century of disillusionment, in which the ancient landmarks had been removed, and men began to ask themselves whether of all the ancient fabric of tradition, of thought, of principles, there was anything certain at all. To make the best of a changed world—that was the problem; and thus art and literature would tend to become pastimes, fierce games born of a desperate sort of make-believe, just to pass the time that remained. Whatever else was uncertain, it was at least certain that life had somehow to be lived; if the great old words like patriotism, virtue, honour, were mere high-sounding names, and stood only for burnt-out illusions, at least there was a space to be filled, before the dark hours came bringing with them the ultimate certainty.