’All the editors, with the exception of Capell, are unanimous in rejecting Titus Andronicus as unworthy of Shakespeare, though they always allow it to be printed with the other pieces, as the scapegoat, as it were, of their abusive criticism.  The correct method in such an investigation is first to examine into the external grounds, evidences, &c., and to weigh their worth; and then to adduce the internal reasons derived from the quality of the work.  The critics of Shakespeare follow a course directly the reverse of this; they set out with a preconceived opinion against a piece, and seek, in justification of this opinion, to render the historical grounds suspicious, and to set them aside.  Titus Andronicus is to be found in the first folio edition of Shakespeare’s works, which it was known was conducted by Heminge and Condell, for many years his friends and fellow-managers of the same theatre.  Is it possible to persuade ourselves that they would not have known if a piece in their repertory did or did not actually belong to Shakespeare?  And are we to lay to the charge of these honourable men a designed fraud in this single case, when we know that they did not show themselves so very desirous of scraping everything together which went by the name of Shakespeare, but, as it appears, merely gave those plays of which they had manuscripts in hand?  Yet the following circumstance is still stronger:  George Meres, a contemporary and admirer of Shakespeare, mentions Titus Andronicus in an enumeration of his works, in the year 1598.  Meres was personally acquainted with the poet, and so very intimately, that the latter read over to him his Sonnets before they were printed.  I cannot conceive that all the critical scepticism in the world would be sufficient to get over such a testimony.

This tragedy, it is true, is framed according to a false idea of the tragic, which by an accumulation of cruelties and enormities degenerates into the horrible, and yet leaves no deep impression behind:  the story of Tereus and Philomela is heightened and overcharged under other names, and mixed up with the repast of Atreus and Thyestes, and many other incidents.  In detail there is no want of beautiful lines, bold images, nay, even features which betray the peculiar conception of Shakespeare.  Among these we may reckon the joy of the treacherous Moor at the blackness and ugliness of his child begot in adultery; and in the compassion of Titus Andronicus, grown childish through grief, for a fly which had been struck dead, and his rage afterwards when he imagines he discovers in it his black enemy; we recognize the future poet of Lear.  Are the critics afraid that Shakespeare’s fame would be injured, were it established that in his early youth he ushered into the world a feeble and immature work?  Was Rome the less the conqueror of the world because Remus could leap over its first walls?  Let any one place himself in Shakespeare’s