The misfortunes of the deaf and dumb are greatly lessened by the substitution of lip-reading for other modes of conversation. The words are read from the movement of the lips so that the deaf can join in an ordinary conversation. In beginning the instruction the lips must be moved slowly, but in time the pupil gains such facility that the words of a public speaker can be taken as well by a deaf person in the audience as by any other. Deaf mutes are frequently very intelligent, and it may be that the "kindergarten" system, which is a necessity in their case, has something to do with their proficiency. In the Clark Institute children are received at the age of five years, and the first year's instruction consists in laying sticks and rings in designs imitated from the teacher. Weaving, card pricking, and drawing are also taught. From this beginning the pupil's development goes on through physical studies, such as zoölogy, botany, physiology, and geography. After these come higher mathematics, geology, chemistry, history, psychology, etc.
CURRENT LITERATURE.
It would seem, or rather it would have seemed, almost impossible to present Shakespeare in any new light, so much has been written by the wise and the foolish, the learned and the ignorant, the bright and the dull, the competent and the incompetent, upon that marvellous man. But Mr. George Wilkes has managed to write a goodly octavo which, while it contains nothing absolutely new upon this subject, presents it as a whole in a fresh aspect.[8 ] Mr. Wilkes says, in his brief preface, a few words which seem to be candid and truly modest. Rigorous criticism, he tells us, will not be unwelcome, not because he has any vain confidence in his own views, but "because they are put forward in good faith in order to elicit truth concerning a genius who is the richest inheritance of the intellectual world." He adds that he presents his book rather as a series of inquiries than as dogmatic doctrine, and that even if his views are controverted, he must be a gainer, "for it can never be a true source of mortification to relinquish opinions in favor of those which are shown to be better." This is indeed the fairest, best spirit of literary candor, and it is expressed with manly ingenuousness. If the author really feels what he utters so well, and we are both bound and willing to believe that he does so, he has set an example of a virtue which should be very much commoner than it is.
In giving to Mr. Wilkes's book the consideration which is due to its careful and intelligent preparation, we are, however, somewhat puzzled at the outset. What is an American point of view in regard to a literary subject, and above all a subject the historical position of which is previous, not only to the Declaration of Independence, but to the settlement of New England? We can apprehend what an "American" point of view might be as to a question of politics, or of society, or even of morals, in the present day; but what such a distinctive view could be even on those subjects, considered as they present themselves at a time when our forefathers, just like the forefathers of the present British people, were in England or in Scotland, we can hardly divine. And as to literature, the difficulty seems still greater. For, in the first place, literature and art are of no country and no time, except historically, and moreover the literature of a language and a race belong to that race and the speakers of that language wherever they may be. A man of English blood and speech loses no right in Shakespeare, he loses no right in any English author, because he happens to be born in New England instead of Old England, or in Australia instead of the Isle of Wight or of Man. Political divisions have nothing to do with literature. We hear nothing of Prussian literature or of Austrian literature; it is all German—"Deutsch." And the eminent German philologist Mentzner, in his great English grammar, that awful book in three octavo volumes, draws for his countless illustrations quite as freely upon Bryant, Irving, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Prescott, and their countrymen, as upon Tennyson, Browning, Macaulay, and theirs. English literature is the literature of the English race wherever it may be. It has nothing to do with the distinctions British and American. They are political only. This is true of all literature, even that of the day; but especially and absolutely is it true of all English literature that was produced before there was any New England. Shakespeare belongs to the people now in England because when he wrote he and their forefathers lived together in England and spoke the same tongue; and exactly for that reason he belongs to all of us here who are of his race and tongue. There is not the slightest difference between the relations of the two people to the one man. This consideration applies, without qualification, to all English literature before 1620; with slight external, unessential modification, to that between 1620 and 1776; and with somewhat greater external, but still unessential modification, to all that has been produced since.
Mr. Wilkes, however, may reasonably reply that while he may or may not agree with this view of English literature, there is in either case an American point of view as to every subject—a view taken from the position in which Americans stand politically and socially; a position which affects their vision and their judgment of all subjects, including literature, even in the form of dramatic poetry, the most absolute form in which it can exist. He is to a certain extent right; and waiving the question as to whether such a view is likely to have any peculiar value, particularly in regard to dramatic poems produced in the other hemisphere nearly three hundred years ago, let us see what in this guise Mr. Wilkes has to present to us.
He opens his book with a reference to the "Baconian theory," as it is called; that is, the notion that the plays published in 1623 as "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies," were actually written by the great Bacon, incorrectly called Lord Bacon. This notion, which may in a certain sense be called "American," because of its setting forth by Miss Delia Bacon, a New England woman, some twenty years ago, is not and never was worth five minutes' serious consideration by any sane human being. It is too foolish to be talked about. No man who really knows anything about the subject has ever given this fancy a moment's entertainment; and we regret to see that Mr. Wilkes is at the pains of examining it carefully all through his book. It is not worthy of refutation. We therefore set small store by the probabilities which he accumulates against it. There is no more ground for reasonable doubt that William Shakespeare did and Francis Bacon did not write the plays attributed to the former than there is for doubt that Horace Greeley did and William Henry Seward did not edit the "Tribune" between the years 1845 and 1865. That Bacon was their author is indeed an American point of view, it having been taken not only by Miss Bacon, but by Judge Holmes of Missouri, and by an unknown American writer in "Frazer's Magazine" for August, 1874. But we are inclined to think that Miss Bacon's book is unknown to Mr. Wilkes except at second hand, else he would not speak of that tremendous octavo tome as a "pamphlet," which he does twice. It was as heavy metaphorically as it was in avoirdupois. It fell dead from the press. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote the introduction to it, says in his "Old Home" that he believes that it never had but one reader, a young man of his acquaintance. He probably had not seen Mr. Grant White's statement, made in some of his Shakespearian books or writings, that "for his sins" he had read every word of it. And we must say from our knowledge of it, that the reading ought to go largely to his credit in his account with purgatory. Judge Holmes's book is very able and ingenious; so much so that it is to be regretted that he did not give his learning and his reasoning powers to better business. In Mr. Wilkes's book we probably have heard the last of this American view of Shakespeare.
Our author also gives much attention to the questions of Shakespeare's religious faith and his knowledge of the law. He is of the opinion that Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic, and that he had not studied law. In both cases we think Mr. Wilkes wrong. Such evidence as Shakespeare's works afford goes, we think, decidedly in favor of their writer's having been a Protestant of unusually "broad church" views for his time, and of his having made some study at least of the attorney's part of law. After considering all that Mr. Wilkes urges, we find nothing in his ingeniously extracted evidence to shake our faith in these probabilities. But in any case all this is of small importance. Suppose Shakespeare to have been a Romanist, and never to have entered an attorney's office: of what moment are these conclusions to the reader of his plays? The facts were important to Shakespeare himself, but are of only the slightest interest to any one else.
Mr. Wilkes's American point of view is finally and chiefly that which he takes of Shakespeare's social feeling, according to his—Mr. Wilkes's—conception of it. He says of him that it seems strange that "unlike all the great geniuses of the world who had come before or [have] come after him, he should be the only one so deficient in that beneficent tenderness toward his race, so vacant of those sympathies which usually accompany intellectual power, as never to have been betrayed into one generous aspiration in favor of popular liberty. Nay, worse than this, worse than his servility to royalty and rank, we never find him speaking of the poor with respect, or alluding to the working classes without detestation or contempt." This view of the great poet-dramatist is repeated over and over again, all through Mr. Wilkes's book. The point is not a new one. It has been considered by one or two of Mr. Wilkes's predecessors, and has been set aside as of no significance by those who have brought it up for consideration. We cannot congratulate Mr. Wilkes upon his success in establishing his position. The subject is of some interest, and for example we take Mr. Wilkes's remarks in his twenty-third chapter, which is entirely devoted to the support he finds for it in the first part of "Henry VI." He quotes passages in which La Pucelle (Joan of Arc) calls herself "a shepherd's daughter," speaks of her "contemptible estate," and her "base vocation"; in which Talbot expresses his insulted feeling at a proposal that he, when a prisoner, should have been proposed in exchange for a "baser man of arms," and in which he and other noblemen speak with contempt of peasants. And then he exclaims, "Lords, lords, lords; nothing but princes and lords, and The People never alluded to except as worthless peasants, or to be scorned as scabs, and hedge-born swains." The reply to all this is much like the famous one as to the stealing of the kettle; which was first, that the defendant did not take the kettle; next that he returned it; and finally that the plaintiff never had any kettle. First these sentiments are not put forth as those of the writer of the play, but as those of the personages who figured in the historical incidents therein dramatized; next it is undeniable that such were the feelings which noblemen and gentlemen of Henry VI.'s time, and of the time when this play was written, had and expressed toward peasants; and finally, whether or no it makes no difference as to Shakespeare's sentiments in regard to his humbler fellow men; for Shakespeare did not write this play. No editor or competent critic of Shakespeare believes that Shakespeare wrote one single scene of the first part of "King Henry VI." True the same feeling is expressed by noblemen and gentlemen in plays which Shakespeare did write; and we notice this particular passage chiefly because of its evidence that Mr. Wilkes, although an intelligent and careful reader of Shakespeare, is not sufficiently acquainted with the history and the literature of his time, or with dramatic literature generally, to undertake to pass judgment upon Shakespeare from the higher points of view, however he may be so to judge him from "an American point of view." For the assertion that Shakespeare was in this respect "unlike all the great geniuses of the world" is absolutely untrue. If Mr. Wilkes will carefully examine the works of the playwrights contemporary with Shakespeare, he will find their dramatis personæ equally made up of "lords, lords, lords," and he will find the lords speaking in just such a way of the common people. If they did not do so, the portraiture would be unfaithful; it would not "hold the mirror up to nature." And if he will look through the plays of Molière, who stands next to Shakespeare as a dramatist, and who was like him a player and a man of the people, he will find all the lords and gentlemen who ruffle through his delightful pages speaking with contempt and ridicule of the lower classes. Moreover, it is absolutely untrue that Shakespeare was even thus indirectly a sycophant to kings and nobles, and a maintainer of their essential superiority. On fitting occasions he puts into their own mouths satires against themselves, their rank, and their pretensions; and he shows, when opportunity offers, a warm sympathy with and tenderness for the lowly and the oppressed. Whoever chooses to do so may find this shown in a few pages of Mr. Grant White's essay on Shakespeare's genius. ("Life and Genius of Shakespeare," pp. 298-302.) If we are to have a peculiarly American view of Shakespeare, pray let us have one founded upon thorough knowledge and taken in a fair spirit. Not that we mean that Mr. Wilkes is intentionally unfair, but that his judgment has been perverted by his strong democratic feeling, and that he seems not to have been able to investigate his subject with the research which it properly demands.