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loneliness of woods, or the realities of day forgotten in the fantasies of midnight. They are no such attenuated illusions as are thus created-mixture of sunshine and vapor, shapes. of mist and moonlight—that play for a moment on the feelings, gleam dimly across the imagination, then leave no trace on the memory or affections. Shakespeare's women are drawn from life-drawn as nature makes them in substance, soul, and form. Each has the individualism of reality—the distinctness of personal existence."

Freeman Clarke says that "this creative, unifying power of imagination also causes Shakespeare's characters to differ from those of all other writers. His unfold from a living centre; theirs are moulded from without. His grow like a plant from its seed; theirs are carved like a statue from a block of marble. Therefore, Shakespeare's characters are like so many real human beings added to mankind. We refer to them as illustrations of human nature, as examples of human conduct, just as we should to real beings. It is not so with the creations of any other writer. Take the characters of Scott, of Schiller, of Goethe; they are not quite persons. They are abstractions; they owe something to costume, to circumstances. Take an everyday man, and educate him in the middle ages as a knight, and you have Ivanhoe; take the same man, and let him be brought up in Scotland, in the days of John Knox, and you have Halbert Glendinning. In all Goethe's characters you get a glimpse of Goethe himself; in all of Scott's you catch the twinkle of the sheriff's eye. But each one of Shakespeare's men and women is as distinctly, though often as slightly, individualized as the two leaves of neighboring trees-almost the same, yet forever immutably different."

Collier says that "so true and subtile an interpreter of the human soul, in its myriad moods, has never written novel, play, or poem. The door of his fancy opened as if

of its own accord, and out trooped such a procession as the world had never seen. The bloodiest crimes and the broadest fun were there; the fresh, silvery laughter of girls and the maniac shriekings of a wretched old man; the stern music of war, and the roar of tavern rioters, mingled with a thousand other various sounds, yet no discordant note was heard in the manifold chorus."

Most great writers show themselves in their works, but Shakespeare has painted all faces, from the king to the. beggar; sages and sots; saints and sinners; heroes and villains; yet we cannot say that the poet himself sat for a single picture in the whole gallery.

No other English writer has been so often reviewed, so often quoted, so closely criticised, so highly commended.

Voltaire gives the following account of "Hamlet:" "It is a gross and barbarous piece, which would not be endured by the vilest populace of France or Italy. Hamlet goes crazy in the second act; his mistress goes crazy in the third. The prince kills the father of his mistress, pretending to kill a rat. They dig a grave on the stage. The grave-diggers say abominably gross things, holding the skulls of the dead in their hands. Hamlet replies in answers no less disgusting and silly than theirs. During this time Poland is conquered by one of the actors. Hamlet, his mother, and father-in-law, drink together on the stage; they sing, quarrel, fight, and kill each other. One would think this play the work of the imagination of a drunken savage."

Hume and the critics of his school undervalued Shakespeare, because they judged every work by classic rules. They put Nature into a strait-jacket, because, in her wildest freaks, she seemed to them a lunatic, and they put Nature's children into a treadmill, because they forgot the strict laws of art. "But human nature is a vagabond itself, maugre the six thousand years of it, and it is this

vagabond feeling in the blood which draws one so strongly to Shakespeare. That sweet and liberal nature blossomed with all human generosities."

And now what can I tell you, in a few lines, of his wonderful plays, except to read, re-read, and study them, beginning, perhaps, with the five tragedies-"Hamlet," "Lear," "Othello," "Macbeth," "Romeo and Juliet." His thirtyseven dramas are classed as tragedies, comedies, and histories. Dr. Johnson says, in his preface to Shakespeare's works: "He that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen." So I will not attempt the impossibility of giving a few extracts to show his style. You should be as familiar with his characters as with those of your home friends, and the more you read, the more you will find to admire. He has furnished maxims for every condition of life, and seems to have known and felt all joys and sorrows. He has a good moral influence, for he always makes us love goodness and hate sin. He stands so far above common mortals, that, judging Shakespeare, is really judging one's self, and he who can find no charm in his writings must be very deficient in both head and heart. The influence of his plays in England and the United States has exceeded that of all other writings, except the Bible; and his words will thrill the hearts of future generations down to the "last syllable of recorded time."

Hazlitt says: "The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, every thing."

Many adjectives and epithets have been used to praise or describe him-such as "honey-tongued," "gentle," "judicious," "myriad-minded," "pleasant Willy," "Nature's darling," "Fancy's child;" but, as Whipple says, "these fond but belittling phrases and pet epithets, which other

authors have condescended to shower upon him, are as little appropriate as would be the patronizing chatter of the planet Venus about the dear darling little Sun," and nothing can ennoble the name of Shakespeare.

"Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven;

No pyramid set off his memories

But the eternal substance of his greatness."

Let me give, in closing, a few words from Henry Giles : "Some writers we are willing to associate with an age, to associate with a country; with others we will not do this, and we cannot. Let Athens have Aristophanes; but even all Greece shall not keep Homer: we give Calderon to Spain; but every nation owns Cervantes: Dante belongs to Italy; Milton belongs to England; but Shakespeare belongs to man."

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As Shakespeare was walking down Broad Street, London, to the Mermaid Tavern, where he used to meet his friends and make his attention was attracted by a child of six, seated on a doorway, singing a melody, and upon an old-fashioned instrument stretching his tiny fingers in search of pleasing chords. It was a little Puritan boy, with closely-cropped hair, large lace frill about his neck, and closely-fitting black

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