Where nothing at once new and true can be said, it is always best to say
nothing; as it is in this case to refrain from all reiteration of
rhapsody which must have been somewhat "mouldy ere" any living man's
"grandsires had nails on their toes," if not at that yet remoter date
"when King Pepin of France was a little boy" and "Queen Guinever of
Britain was a little wench." In the _Merchant of Venice_, at all events,
there is hardly a single character from Portia to old Gobbo, a single
incident from the exaction of Shylock's bond to the computation of hairs
in Launcelot's beard and Dobbin's tail, which has not been more
plentifully beprosed than ever Rosalind was berhymed. Much wordy wind
has also been wasted on comparison of Shakespeare's Jew with Marlowe's;
that is, of a living subject for terror and pity with a mere mouthpiece
for the utterance of poetry as magnificent as any but the best of
Shakespeare's.
Nor can it well be worth any man's while to say or to hear for the
thousandth time that _As You Like It_ would be one of those works which
prove, as Landor said long since, the falsehood of the stale axiom that
no work of man's can be perfect, were it not for that one unlucky slip of
the brush which has left so ugly a little smear in one corner of the
canvas as the betrothal of Oliver to Celia; though, with all reverence
for a great name and a noble memory, I can hardly think that matters were
much mended in George Sand's adaptation of the play by the transference
of her hand to Jaques.
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