Spain? And had it been sold, perhaps, for an old song, and with other
remnants of Gondomar's books, just for their local interest, to some
Valladolid grandee?

Above all, did those marginal notes which Gayangos had once idly looked
through contain, perhaps--though the First Folio does not, of course,
include the Poems--some faint key to the perennial Shakespeare
mysteries--to Mr. W.H., and the "dark lady," and all the impenetrable
story of the Sonnets?

If so, the gods themselves took care that the veil should not be rent.
The secret remains.

Others abide our question--Thou art free.
We ask and ask. Thou standest and art still,
Outtopping knowledge.

* * * * *

One other recollection of the _Robert Elsmere_ year may fitly end my
story of it. In September we spent an interesting afternoon at
Hawarden--the only time I ever saw "Mr. G." at leisure, amid his own
books and trees. We drove over with Sir Robert and Lady Cunliffe, Mr.
Gladstone's neighbors on the Welsh border, with whom we were staying.
Sir Robert, formerly an ardent Liberal, had parted from Mr. Gladstone in
the Home Rule crisis of 1886, and it was the first time they had called
at Hawarden since the split. But nothing could have been kinder than the
Gladstones' reception of them and of us. "Mr. G." and I let theology
alone!--and he was at his best and brightest, talking books and poetry,
showing us the octagonal room he had built out for his 60,000 selected