But Alceste would have taken her to his own.
No quainter and apter example was ever given of many men's absolute
inability to see the plainest aims, to learn the simplest rudiments, to
appreciate the most practical requisites of art, whether applied to
theatrical action or to any other as evident as exalted aim, than the
instance afforded by that criticism of time past which sagaciously
remarked that "any less amusingly absurd" constables than Dogberry and
Verges would have filled their parts in the action of the play equally
well. Our own day has doubtless brought forth critics and students of
else unparalleled capacity for the task of laying wind-eggs in mare's
nests, and wasting all the warmth of their brains and tongues in the
hopeful endeavour to hatch them: but so fine a specimen was never dropped
yet as this of the plumed or plumeless biped who discovered that if
Dogberry had not been Dogberry and Verges had not been Verges they would
have been equally unsuccessful in their honest attempt to warn Leonato
betimes of the plot against his daughter's honour. The only explanation
of the mistake is this; and it is one of which the force will be
intelligible only to those who are acquainted with the very singular
physiology of that remarkably prolific animal known to critical science
as the Shakespearean scholiast: that if Dogberry had been other than
Dogberry, or if Verges had been other than Verges, the action and
catastrophe of the whole play could never have taken place at all.
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