object of supreme interest. Time, which is the relentless enemy of all
that is partial and provisional, is the friend of Shakespeare, because
it continually brings to the student of his work illustration and
confirmation of its truth. There are many things in his plays which
are more intelligible and significant to us than they were to the men
who heard their musical cadence on the rude Elizabethan stage, because
the ripening of experience has given the prophetic thought an
historical demonstration; and there are truths in these plays which
will be read with clearer eyes by the men of the next century than
they are now read by us.

It is this prophetic quality in the books of power which silently
moves them forward with the inaudible advance of the successive files
in the ranks of the generations, and which makes them contemporary
with each generation. For while the mediæval frame-work upon which
Dante constructed the "Divine Comedy" becomes obsolete, the
fundamental thought of the poet about human souls and the identity of
the deed and its result not only remains true to experience but has
received the most impressive confirmation from subsequent history and
from psychology.

It is as impossible, therefore, to get away from the books of power as
from the stars; every new generation must make acquaintance with them,
because they are as much a part of that order of things which forms
the background of human life as nature itself. With every intelligent
man or woman the question is not, "Shall I take account of them?" but
"How shall I get the most and the best out of them for my enrichment
and guidance?"

It is with the hope of assisting some readers and students of books,