Excerpt from On the Philosophy of History: An Address to the Historical Society, University of Glasgow, January 8, 1909 He does not reduce Shakespeare to a play of ideas, and does not wish to improve him. Ancient Pistol is good enough as he is, and Hegel laughs and applauds. Sometimes one is inclined to think 'how great a critic was in Hegel lost' he is so inspiriting in his judgment of character, so sound in his policy towards Romance; his sane appreciation (like Goethe's) being quite another thing from coldness. But possibly his digressions and escapades of criticism are all the better as they are, being unprofessional and unexpected. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.