Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be ye yt moves my bones.


When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers,
he ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus
sake forbeare, because he will find the transition from great
poetry to poor prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a
shock. You never notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is,
until you bite into a layer of it in a pie.



CHAPTER XI



Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write
Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be
so soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for
nearly seventy-four years? It would grieve me to know that any one
could think so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so
unadmiringly of me. No-no, I am aware that when even the brightest
mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a
superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind,
in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and
conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem