No isolated quotations can, however, do justice to the religious depth of Shakspeare's view of the world. In all his dramas God is immanent in human life. Not only is there a conscience in man's nature speaking as the voice of God, but there is a righteousness at the heart of things incessantly working its way to the surface. Goodness, however it may be depressed and impeded, is always on the way to victory; but wickedness, however lofty for the present its pretensions may be, is always verging towards downfall and exposure. Nor is God only immanent in the world: He is at the same time sovereign above it and omnipotent around it. This earthly life, with all the visible frame of things, is only an islet in the ocean of eternity, and the day will come when the islet will be submerged and will disappear; but man will still continue and still be under the rule of God through the long ages of eternity.

Sir Sidney Lee, author of the standard Life of Shakspeare, who is unsympathetic towards the religious element in the dramatist, is rendered uneasy by the fact, that a preacher, "doubtless," he says, "of puritan proclivities," was entertained at Shakspeare's residence in 1614. He seems to forget that, at that time, a preacher, even if a Puritan, would have been a clergyman and would have officiated in the Anglican Church. What difficulty is there in supposing such a person to have been entertained at the New Place when on a visit to the town? Let us hope that he was a con

genial spirit, and that the hospitality was enjoyed by both host and guest. That Puritanism was spreading at Stratford when Shakspeare returned to the town is proved by a deliverance against stage-plays by the Corporation at this very time.

However little Shakspeare may have been estimated at his true worth by his fellow-townsmen during the years when he was moving about amongst them as an ordinary citizen, there was appropriate dignity in at least the last act, when he was buried in a grave seventeen feet deep in the chancel of the Parish Church. The spot, in itself, would indicate that the buried man had been a person of consequence, even had there not been erected, before 1623, on the wall above the grave, a bust of the poet in the act of writing, which still survives in a state of excellent preservation.

This represents a man of wellknit frame, with a strong face and high sloping forehead, and, though not executed with a great deal of skill, it must, it may be presumed, have been sufficiently like the original to justify its erection. A decided resemblance to it is borne by a portrait now preserved in a fireproof safe in the birth-house, which displays much spirit and is probably to be preferred to all other representations; but whether it was copied from the bust or the bust from it cannot now be ascertained.1 A portrait, also preserved

This is the portrait reproduced as frontispiece to the present volume. I prefer it for the reasons stated; but connoisseurs do not as a rule, value it highly.

at Stratford, from which the frontispiece prefixed to the first folio edition of the works was copied, exhibits a certain amount of resemblance to the bust; and its truth to the original was certified in the strongest terms in lines accompanying the woodcut from the pen of Ben Jonson. Thus both of these likenesses are authenticated; but all other representations of the lineaments of the man are more or less conjectural. Certain it is that, even in outward aspect, he was a good specimen of manhood, agreeable in conversation and gentle in manners. "Gentle" was, indeed, the term which occurred most naturally to his contemporaries when they wished to characterize him.1

Was Shakspeare himself conscious of being the genius we now know him to have been? or were his contemporaries aware how great a personality they had amongst them?

In the Sonnets the author frequently promises that his lines will immortalise him to whom they were addressed; but at that time every sonneteering poetaster was making the same boast to his patron. From the

1 Shakspeare's last Will and Testament, after a few words of introduction, proceeded: "First, I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing through the only merits of Jesus Christ to be made partaker of life everlasting". Sir Sidney Lee remarks that this was a conventional form; this is true; but so is Mr. Carter's remark, that it was a Puritan, not a Catholic form,

pages of contemporary writers, in both verse and prose, a very handsome collection of tributes to his memory can be made; but appreciations of no less intensity have been showered on authors whose names have

been written in water. It was only when the Works of Shakspeare were published in a complete and permanent form that the foundations of his fame were securely laid; for then it was as inevitable that the human mind should find out his greatness as it is that crumbs should attract the sparrows or honey the bees. The very size of the volume was a challenge; for, whatever repulsions or defects might be encountered in it, there was bound up with these a body of work so solid, together with individual passages so sublime and beautiful, that every reader of capacity was rewarded and drawn back again to the feast. As a mere collection of stories the book could not but form an imperishable possession of the English race, as has been perceived by those who, like Charles and Mary Lamb, have, in the interest of the young, retold these tales from Shakspeare. In the perusal of these stories and histories there rise on the reader the figures and fortunes of a series of characters so numerous and lifelike as to form not so much a gallery of portraits as a world of living men and women. The entire work is seasoned with wit and wisdom-with reflections on human life and shrewd criticisms on human nature, with rules to guide conduct, and with the enunciation

in just and moving language of those principles on which depend the dignity and the welfare of both individuals and nations. Every beginner is astonished at the number of lines and passages with which he is acquainted already, because these have passed into the common speech and dialect of men. Except the Bible, there is no other book from which so dazzling a collection of beauties or so complete a body of proverbs and maxims can be culled. But the most all-pervading element is that which has been styled the "metaphysical"-namely, the sense of the universe, as bodied forth by the poet's imagination, being surrounded and interpenetrated by something impalpable and immeasurable-call it thought, wisdom, righteousness, love, or what you will-through which it is ordered and unified, evolving towards a perfection never attained yet sunk as a promise and a hope at the centre of all existence.

As the foundation of Shakspeare's fame was laid by the first publication of his Complete Works, so has the best service been rendered to it by the continued republication of these. By a long series of editors, uninterrupted down to the present day-Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, Johnson, Cappell, Steevens, Malone, Dyce, Knight, Aldis Wright, Gollancz and many others—the text has been purified, the obscurities have been cleared up, and the thought illustrated, till the reader can complain of no want of assistance. Indeed, a serious danger of an opposite