The common cant of criticism for generations had been that "sense" and "reason" were to be the only criteria.

Walpole's egregious helmet dropped from no one knew (or knows) where on all these Philistinisms: and squelched them.

How it did this, why it did it, and so forth, one knows not much more than one knows why and how all the things happened in the novel itself.

_Apres coup_, the author talked about "Shakespeare" (of whom, by the way, he was anything but a fervent or thorough admirer) and the like.

Shakespeare had, as Sir Walter Raleigh has well pointed out, uncommonly little to do with it.