Bell & Sons in improving several of their more
or less obsolete editions will only be entirely praiseworthy if we may
take it as an earnest of their desire to place the whole series on a
level with contemporary knowledge and criticism.
Nor can anyone who knows how much the industry and enthusiasm of Dyce
did, in his day, for the study of Shakespeare, do more than urge that
while, viewed historically, Dyce's criticism is entirely respectable,
it happens to be a trifle belated in the year 1894. The points of
difference between him and Charles Lamb are perhaps too obvious to
need indication; but we may sum them up by saying that whereas Lamb,
being a genius, belongs to all time, Dyce, being but an industrious
person, belongs to a period. It was a period of rapid development, no
doubt--how rapid we may learn for ourselves by the easy process of
taking down Volume V. of Chalmers's "English Poets," and turning to
that immortal passage on Shakespeare's poems which Chalmers put forth
in the year 1810:--
"The peremptory decision of Mr. Steevens on the merits of these
poems must not be omitted. 'We have not reprinted the Sonnets,
etc., of Shakespeare, because the strongest Act of Parliament
that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their
service.
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