essed our convictions
with any adequate fidelity; but there is in all cultivated minds a
silent appreciation of his superlative power and beauty, which, like
Christianity, qualifies the period.

The Shakespeare Society have inquired in all directions, advertised
the missing facts, offered money for any information that will lead
to proof; and with what result? Beside some important illustration of
the history of the English stage, to which I have adverted, they have
gleaned a few facts touching the property, and dealings in regard to
property, of the poet. It appears that, from year to year, he owned a
larger share in the Blackfriars Theatre: its wardrobe and other
appurtenances were his; that he bought an estate in his native
village, with his earnings, as writer and shareholder; that he lived
in the best house in Stratford; was intrusted by his neighbours with
their commissions in London, as of borrowing money, and the like; that
he was a veritable farmer. About the time when he was writing
_Macbeth_, he sues Philip Rogers, in the borough-court of Stratford,
for thirty-five shillings, ten pence, for corn delivered to him at
different times; and, in all respects, appears as a good husband, with
no reputation for eccentricity or excess. He was a good-natured sort
of man, an actor and shareholder in the theatre, not in any striking
manner distinguished from other actors and managers. I admit the
importance of this information. It was well worth the pains that have
been taken to procure it.

But whatever scraps of information concerning his condition these
researches may have rescued, they can shed no light upon that infinite
invention which is the concealed magnet of his attraction for us. We
are very clumsy writers of history. We tell the chronicle of
parentage, birth, birthplace, schooling, schoolmates, earning of
money, marriage, publication of books, celebrity, death; and when we
have come to an end of this gossip, no ray of relation appears
between it and the goddess-born; and it seems as if, had we dipped at
random into the _Modern Plutarch_ and read any other life there, it
would have fitted the poems as well. It is the essence of poetry to
spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to
abolish the past, and refuse all history. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and
Collier have wasted their oil. The famed theatres, Covent Garden,
Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont, have vainly assisted. Betterton,
Ga