disgusting and ungenerous task of raking up a heap of the weaknesses,
vanities, and miserablenesses of actors and actresses dead and gone.
After life's fitful fever they sleep (I trust) well; and in common
candour, it ought never to be forgotten that whilst it has always been
the fashion--until one memorable day Mr. Froude ran amuck of it--for
biographers to shroud their biographees (the American Minister must
bear the brunt of this word on his broad shoulders) in a crape veil of
respectability, the records of the stage have been written in another
spirit. We always know the worst of an actor, seldom his best. David
Garrick was a better man than Lord Eldon, and Macready was at least as
good as Dickens.

There is however, one portion of this body of involuntary testimony on
which I must be allowed to rely, for it may be referred to without
offence.

Our dramatic literature is our greatest literature. It is the best
thing we have done. Dante may over-top Milton, but Shakespeare
surpasses both. He is our finest achievement; his plays our noblest
possession; the things in the world most worth thinking about. To live
daily in his company, to study his works with minute and loving care--
in no spirit of pedantry searching for double endings, but in order to
discover their secret, and to make the spoken word tell upon the
hearts of man and woman--this might have been expected to produce
great intellectual if not moral results.

The most magnificent compliment ever paid by man to woman is
undoubtedly Steele's to the Lady Elizabeth Hastings. 'To love her,'
wrote he, 'is a liberal education.' As much might surely be said of
Shakespeare.