reformed at once. Shakespeare, who had hitherto studied the ancients only in the fashion of the fine writers of modern Italy, . . . now seriously studies Plutarch and Sallust, and seeks of them those great teachings on human life with which the chapters of Michael Montaigne are filled. Is it not surprising to see Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus suddenly taken up by the man who has just (tout à l'heure) been describing in thirty-six stanzas, like Marini, the doves of the car of Venus? And does not one see that he comes fresh from the reading of Montaigne, who never ceased to translate, comment, and recommend the ancients . . .? The dates of Shakespeare's CORIOLANUS, CLEOPATRA, and JULIUS CÆSAR are incontestable. These dramas follow on from 1606 to 1608, with a rapidity which proves the fecund heat of an imagination still moved."

All this must be revised in the light of a more correct chronology. Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR dates, not from 1606 but from 1600 or 1601, being referred to in Weever's MIRROR OF MARTYRS, published in 1601, to say nothing of the reference in the third Act of HAMLET itself, where Polonius speaks of such a play. And, even if it had been written after 1604, it would still be a straining of the evidence to ascribe its production, with that of CORIOLANUS and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, to the influence of Montaigne, when every one of these themes was sufficiently obtruded on the Elizabethan theatre by North's translation of Amyot's PLUTARCH. As a matter of fact, a play on Julius Cæsar was known as early

as 1579; and there were many others.1 Any one who will compare CORIOLANUS with North's translation will see that Shakespeare has followed the text down to the most minute and supererogatory details, even to the making of blunders by putting the biographer's remarks in the mouths of the characters. The comparison throws a flood of light on Shakespeare's mode of procedure; but it tells us nothing of his perusal of Montaigne. Rather it suggests a return from the method of the revised HAMLET, with its play of reverie, to the more strictly dramatic method of the chronicle histories, though with a new energy and concision of presentment. The real clue to Montaigne's influence on Shakespeare beyond HAMLET, as we have seen, lies not in the Roman plays, but in MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

There is a misconception involved, again, in M. Chasles's picture of an abrupt transition from Shakespeare's fantastic youthful method to that of HAMLET and the Roman plays. He overlooks the intermediate stages represented by such plays as ROMEO AND JULIET, HENRY IV, HENRY V, KING JOHN, TWELFTH NIGHT, MUCH ADO, the MERCHANT OF VENICE, and As You LIKE IT,

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1885, P. 497.

all of which exhibit a great advance on the methods of LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST, with its rhymes and sonnets and "concetti." The leap suggested by M. Chasles is exorbitant: such a headlong development would be unintelligible. Shakespeare had first to come practically into touch with the realities of life and character before he could receive from Montaigne the full stimulus he actually did undergo. Plastic as he was, he none the less underwent a normal evolution; and his early concreteness and verbalism and externality had to be gradually transmuted into a more inward knowledge of life and art before there could be superimposed on that the mood of the thinker, reflectively aware of the totality of what he had passed through.

Finally, the most remarkable aspect of Shakespeare's mind is not that presented by CORIOLANUS and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, which with all their intense vitality represent rather his marvellous power of reproducing impressions than the play of his own criticism on the general problem of life. For the full revelation of this we must look rather in the great tragedies, notably in LEAR, and thereafter in the subsiding movement of the later serious plays. There it is that we learn to give exactitude to our con

ception of the influence exerted upon him by Montaigne, and to see that, even as in the cases of Pascal and Montesquieu, Rousseau and Emerson, what happened was not a mere transference or imposition of opinions, but a living stimulus, a germination of fresh intellectual life, which developed under new forms. It would be strange if the most receptive and responsive of all the intelligences which Montaigne has touched should not have gone on differentiating itself from his.

VIII

SHAKESPEARE'S RELATION TO MONTAIGNE

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WHAT then is the general, and what the final relation of Shakespeare's thought to that of Montaigne? How far did the younger man approve and assimilate the ideas of the elder; how far did he reject them, how far modify them? In some respects this is the most difficult part of our inquiry, were it only because Shakespeare is firstly and lastly a dramatic writer. But he is not only that he is at once the most subjective, the most sympathetic, and the most self-withholding of dramatic writers. Conceiving all situations, all epochs, in terms of his own perception and his own psychology, he is yet the furthest removed from all dogmatic design on the opinions of his listeners; and it is only after a most vigilant process of moral logic that we can ever be justified in attributing to him this or that thesis of any one of his personages, apart from the general ethical sympathies which must be taken for granted.