marks these brief and pithy prefaces, and the pertinency of every sentence to the matter in hand.  The Germans, (to whom we are undeniably indebted for the first philosophic appreciation of the poet,) being debarred by their alienage from the tempting parliament of verbal commentary and conflict, have made themselves such ample amends by expatiations in the unfenced field of aesthetics and of that constructive criticism which is too often confined to the architecture of Castles in Spain, that we feel as if Dogberry had charged us in relation to them with that hopelessly bewildering commission to “comprehend all vagrom men” which we have hitherto considered applicable only to peripatetic lecturers.  Mr. White wisely and kindly leaves us to Shakspeare and our own imaginations,—­two very potent spells to conjure with,—­and seems to be aware of the fact, that, in its application to a creative mind like that of the great Poet, the science of teleology may sometimes find itself as much at fault as it so often is in attempting to fathom the designs of the Infinite Creator.  Rabelais solves the grave problem of the goodliness of Friar John’s nose by the comprehensive formula, “Because God willed it so”; and it is well for us in most cases to enjoy Shakspeare in the same pious way,—­to smell a rose without bothering ourselves about its having been made expressly to serve the turn of the essence-peddlers of Shiraz.  We yield the more credit to Mr. White’s self-denial in this respect, because his notes prove him to be capable of profound as well as delicate and sympathetic exegesis.  Shakspeare himself has left us a pregnant satire on dogmatical and categorical esthetics (which commonly in discussion soon lose their ceremonious tails and are reduced to the internecine dog and cat of their bald first syllables) in the cloud-scene between Hamlet and Polonius, suggesting exquisitely how futile is any attempt at a cast-iron definition of those perpetually metamorphic impressions of the beautiful, whose source is as much in the man who looks as in the thing he sees.  And elsewhere more directly,—­Mr. White must allow us the old reading for the sake of our illustration,—­he has told us how

        “Affection,
  Master of passion, sways it to the mood
  Of what it likes or loathes.”

We are glad to see, likewise, with what becoming indifference the matter of Shakspeare’s indebtedness to others is treated by Mr. White in his Introductions.  There are many commentators who seem to think they have wormed themselves into the secret of the Master’s inspiration when they have discovered the sources of his plots.  But what he took was by right of eminent domain; and was he not to resuscitate a theme and make it immortal, because some botcher had tried his hand upon it before, and left it for stone-dead?  Because he could not help throwing sizes, was he to avoid the dice which for others would only come up ames-ace?