18 AUGUST 1928, Page 19

It is in the eighteenth century that the reputation of

Shakespeare was finally consolidated. Dryden and Milton had previously set him upon a pinnacle in their view of him as one of the supreme writers of all ages, but the view was not really established until the following century. In Professor Nichol Smith's Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 5s.), we follow the growth of the modern outlook on Shakespeare in the criticism of Pope, Theobald, Johnson, Morgan, and other eighteenth-century critics ; in particular, it was during this period that detailed studies were first made of the characters in the plays.

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