" Here then the great Sham
Shakespearean secret is out at last. Had I but known in time my lifelong
error in thinking that a capacity to estimate the refinements of word-
music was not to be gauged by length of ear, by hairiness of ear, or by
thickness of ear, but by delicacy of ear alone, I should as soon have
thought of measuring my own poor human organs against those of the
patriarch or leader of the herd as of questioning his indisputable right
to lay down the law to all who agree with his great fundamental
theorem--that the longest ear is the most competent to judge of metre.
_Habemus confitentem asinum_.
{266} A Latin pun, or rather a punning Latinism, not altogether out of
Shakespeare's earliest line. But see the note preceding this one.
{269} The simple substitution of the word "is" for the word "and" would
rectify the grammar here--were that worth while.
{270} Qu. So there is but one France, etc.?
{271} Non-Shakespearean.
{273} I choose for a parallel Shakespeare's use of Plutarch in the
composition of his Roman plays rather than his use of Hall and Holinshed
in the composition of his English histories, because Froissart is a model
more properly to be set against Plutarch than against Holinshed or Hall.
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