But in those days I had yet to
learn what manner of ears are pricked up to listen "when rank Thersites
opes his mastiff jaws" in criticism of Homer or of Shakespeare. In a
corner of the preface to an edition of "Shakspere" which bears on its
title-page the name (correctly spelt) of Queen Victoria's youngest son
prefixed to the name I have just transcribed, a small pellet of dry dirt
was flung upwards at me from behind by the "able editor" thus irritably
impatient to figure in public as the volunteer valet or literary lackey
of Prince Leopold. Hence I gathered the edifying assurance that this
aspirant to the honours of literature in livery had been reminded of my
humbler attempts in literature without a livery by the congenial music of
certain four-footed fellow-critics and fellow-lodgers of his own in the
neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath. Especially and most naturally had
their native woodnotes wild recalled to the listening biped (whom partial
nature had so far distinguished from the herd) the deep astonishment and
the due disgust with which he had discovered the unintelligible fact that
to men so ignorant of music or the laws of music in verse as my
presumptuous and pitiable self the test of metrical harmony lay not in an
appeal to the fingers but only in an appeal to the ear--"the ear which
he" (that is, which the present writer) "makes so much of--AND WHICH
SHOULD BE LONG TO MEASURE SHAKSPERE.
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