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from the same authority. But this was a common trick of the ancient historian. Where Bible ends, on which score he can make a reasonable appeal, as the most ancient of books, and where legend begins, he defines not. Even when he tells us he translates from the Hebrew original, we find that he has been using the Greek translation.

Josephus was limited both by race and environment. His Greek culture enabled him to write a history of a scope and a value which no other Jew ever attempted till modern times. His self-conscious Judaism was the motive of it. His faults are those of both the Greek and the Barbarian of his age. He failed in the lack of critical ability, but we cannot judge him from modern standards or of those of the ranking classic historians; we are to be thankful that he wrote history at all. He exceeded the mark in the over-glorification of his people, but we can excuse his vigorous championship in a day when none had a good word to speak for the Jew. Jerome called him the Jewish Livy, and such he is as to the scope of national history he projected. We might think of him as the Jewish Thucydides, not in his art but for his fate in writing the history of the national tragedy in which he was a participator. But taken by himself he stands unique in Jewish literature, and if he has given us much chaff with the wheat at least we must credit him with his largess of the wheat.

THE RAILWAY PUZZLE

BY EMORY R. JOHNSON

Professor of Transportation and Commerce
and Dean of the Wharton School

Editor's Note-The lecture on the "Railroad Puzzle" was delivered in January 1920 when there was pending before the Conference Committee of the Senate and House the Cummins Bill that had been passed by the Senate, and the Esch Bill that had been passed by the House, each following a different plan for the government regulation of the railroads. At the time the lecture was given, the public was considering the various principles and policies of railroad regulation, and the purpose of the lecture was to simplify, if not to solve, the problem then under consideration.

The following month the Transportation Act of 1920 was passed, and the various questions that were considered by Dean Johnson in his lecture upon the "Railroad Puzzle" were disposed of. For that reason it does not seem necessary to include the lecture in this volume. Dean Johnson, after stating what he conceived the railroad puzzle to be, explained briefly how the present railroad situation had developed during the European War, when the government took over the operation of the railroads. The reasons that led the President to take over the operation of the railroads under powers that had been granted him in 1916 were set forth, but the wisdom of the policy of direct operation of the railroads by the Government was questioned by the speaker. The main facts as to the results of government operation were enumerated, and a brief analysis was presented of the several plans that had been developed for the future regulation of the railroads by the Government, that is, for the solution of the railroad problem.

The main differences between the Cummins and Esch bills were set forth, and the speaker expressed preference for the Cummins Bill, which in his judgment was based upon sounder principles of railroad regulation.

The lecture closed with the statement that the fundamental issue was between government ownership and private ownership, and the opinion was expressed that to be compelled to adopt government ownership would be a national calamity. It was stated that the vital question to be solved, after having decided upon corporate ownership and operation, is how to restore and stabilize railroad credit. It was pointed out that this would require a large increase in the revenues of the railroads, without which the carriers would be unable to serve the public adequately and efficiently.

G.E.N.

THE SEEDPOD OF SHAKESPEARE CRITICISM

BY FELIX E. SCHELLING

John Welsh, Centennial Professor of History and
English Literature

The title of this lecture, The Seedpod of Shakespeare Criticism, was suggested long ago by that most obvious of disparities, the difference between an oak and an acorn. Though if the origins of comment on Shakespeare and his work are to be likened to an acorn, we shall have to find something more tangled, confused and impenetrable, something less dignified than an oak, properly to figure forth that dense, overgrown and fanciful jungle, Shakespeare criticism. Paths there are few through it, and these are wandering and zigzag. Much of its growth is like the upas tree, sprouting upward to impede and downward to entangle, illogical, presumptuous, unnecessary, a good deal of it, and uninformed. Yet all these fronds and dangling vines, with some sound growth as well, have sprung from some seed and as we follow back in imagination we come closer and closer to the simple beginnings whence it has all come.

Many years ago, when bicycles were in vogue, I was captured, one fine summer day, by a sometime student of mine who was then the president of a freshwater college up the state. He has since degenerated into a politician-but academic degeneracy is not the topic of this lecture. Small clothes and all, I was carried into a big auditorium to talk, on a few moments' notice, and I asked for any copy of Shakespeare that might be at hand. I had in mind that prefatory material to the first folio of the plays about which everybody knows and which few people have ever read. Though possessed of numerous editions of Shakespeare, not one book could be found in that college which reprinted this ancient

material, and I naturally talked about something else. Later, investigating the matter, I realized that this introductory material of the old folio was seldom if ever reprinted in modern editions of Shakespeare, as every editor was anxious to write something prefatory of his own. We could perhaps spare the dedication "To the most noble and incomparable pair of brethren, William Earl of Pembroke, etc., Lord Chamberlaine to the King's most excellent majesty, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery, etc., gentleman of his majesty's bedchamber, both knights of the most noble order of the Garter and our singular good lords." It is admirably written in the eulogistic manner of the time, which, like its towering ruffs, its beaded and brocaded jerkins and stomakers and farthingales, elaborately concealed much of the real men and women beneath. But can we spare from the book that reprints the words of our Hamlet, our Falstaff and our Imogen, the vivacious preface, "To the great variety of readers," an address which includes everyone of us, my friends, "from the more able (which, means all of you) to him who can but spell?" Can we spare the fine lines "To the memory of my beloved, the author, Master William Shakespeare and what he hath left us," penned by the greatest poet, dramatic or other, who survived Shakespeare in his day? Even the lesser praises of two or three minor men are not impertinent, to say nothing of the Droeshout portrait of the title page and Jonson's epigram about it "To the Reader." When my friend, Prófessor Neilson of Harvard, now president of Smith College, yielded to the blandishments of a publisher and edited The Complete Works of Shakespeare, exceedingly well but printed in that wicked wise, the double column, I expostulated with him for this omission, which I am glad to see that he has corrected; and now at least in one modern edition we may read our Shakespeare as he came from the press and find these opening passages which, albeit his pen did not trace them, are yet as veritably a part of his book as Marc Antony's address to the populace of Rome over the body of the dead Caesar or as the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth.

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