To admire, to be an enthusiast,--it has struck me that it was right to give in our century this example of folly. CHAPTER III. Do not look, then, for any criticism. I admire Æschylus, I admire Juvenal, I admire Dante, in the mass, in a lump, all. I do not cavil at those great benefactors. What you characterize as a fault, I call accent. I accept and give thanks. I do not inherit the marvels of human wit conditionally. Pegasus being given to me, I do not look the gift-horse in the mouth. A masterpiece offers its hospitality: I approach it with my hat off, and think the visage of mine host handsome. Gilles Shakespeare, it may be: I admire Shakespeare and I admire Gilles. Falstaff is proposed to me: I accept him, and I admire the "Empty the jorden." I admire the senseless cry, "A rat!" I admire the jests of Hamlet; I admire the wholesale murders of Macbeth; I admire the witches, "that ridiculous spectacle;" I admire "the buttock of the night;" I admire the eye plucked from Gloster. I am simple enough to admire all. Having recently had the honour to be called "silly" by several distinguished writers and critics, and even by my illustrious friend M. de Lamartine,[1] I am determined to justify the epithet. We close with one last observation which we have specially to make regarding Shakespeare. Orestes, that fatal senior of Hamlet, is not, as we have said, the sole link between Æschylus and Shakespeare; we have noted a relation, less easily perceptible, between Prometheus and Hamlet. The mysterious close connection between the two poets is, in reference to this same Prometheus, more strangely striking yet, and in a particular which, up to this time, has escaped the observers and critics. Prometheus is the grandsire of Mab. Let us prove it. Prometheus, like all personages become legendary,--like Solomon, like Cæsar, like Mahomet, like Charlemagne, like the Cid, like Joan of Arc, like Napoleon,--has a double prolongation, the one in history, the other in fable. Now, the prolongation of Prometheus is this: Prometheus, creator of men, is also creator of spirits. He is father of a dynasty of Divs, whose filiation the old metrical tales have preserved: Elf, that is to say, the Rapid, son of Prometheus; then Elfin, King of India; then Elfinan, founder of Cleopolis, town of the fairies; then Elfilin, builder of the golden wall; then Elfinell, winner of the battle of the demons; then Elfant, who made Panthea entirely in crystal; then Elfar, who killed Bicephalus and Tricephalus; then Elfinor, the magian, a kind of Salmoneus, who built over the sea a bridge of copper, sounding like thunder, "non imitabile fulmen aere et cornipedum pulsu simularat equorum;" then seven hundred princes; then Elficleos the Sage; then Elferon the Beautiful; then Oberon; then Mab,--wonderful fable, which, with a profound meaning, unites the sidereal and the microscopic, the infinitely great and the infinitely small.