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incredulity does injustice to the scrupulosity of his truthfulness, I can only conclude that as surely as there has seldom been a poet of greater or of equal genius, so surely has there seldom been a critic of greater or of equal imbecility. For in his case we find no such explanation of the inexplicable as in the case of the distinguished living poet and critic, theologian and philosopher, whose practical definition of criticism would seem to be 'a something not ourselves, making for paradox.' The smiling academic irony of Mr. Matthew Arnold forbids us to consider too curiously the erratic and eccentric vehemence of misjudgment which seems at first sight a quality not properly belonging—not conceivable as natural or as native—to the same identity or individuality as that of an exquisite and original poet. But if the author of Thyrsis be the real Mr. Arnold, I cannot avoid the inference that the critic who places Byron above Shelley and Wordsworth above Coleridge is something not himself—something, shall we say, definable as a stream of tendency making for unrighteousness in criticism and inconsistent with righteousness in poetry? Be that as it may, the value and authority of Shelley's critical opinion may be gauged by the conclusive evidence of this damning fact—that he could trace no sign of Shakespeare's hand in the style of The Two Noble Kinsmen; a play in which the master's peculiar touch is as unmistakable by any competent reader as it is in Pericles; or, for that matter, as it is in Hamlet. The man who could venture to say, 'I do not believe Shakespeare wrote a word of it,' is simply out of court as a judge of composition or of style. To acknowledge this is no more inconsistent with appreciation of Shelley's greatness than it is inconsistent with appreciation of another great poet's pre-eminence to recognize that Coleridge was one of the most untrustworthy of verbal critics—that some of the various emendations or suggestions in his notes on