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THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT. _An Arabian Entertainment. By George Meredith. Chapman and Hall_. 1856.
It is nearly forty years since I first heard of _The Shaving of Shagpat_. I was newly come, in all my callow ardour, into the covenant of Art and Letters, and I was moving about, still bewildered, in a new world. In this new world, one afternoon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, standing in front of his easel, remarked to all present whom it should concern, that _The Shaving of Shagpat_ was a book which Shakespeare might have been glad to write. I now understand that in the warm Rossetti-language this did not mean that there was anything specially reminiscent of the Bard of Avon in this book, but simply that it was a monstrous fine production, and worthy of all attention. But at the time I expected, from such a title, something in the way of a belated _Midsummer Night's Dream_ or _Love's Labour's Lost_.