hers, taking
a hint from the sonnet beginning "Two loves I have, of comfort and
despair," divide them all into two classes, addressed to a man who was
Shakespeare's friend, and to a woman who disdained his love. The reader may
well avoid such classifications and read a few sonnets, like the twenty-
ninth, for instance, and let them speak their own message. A few are
trivial and artificial enough, suggesting the elaborate exercises of a
piano player; but the majority are remarkable for their subtle thought and
exquisite expression. Here and there is one, like that beginning

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,

which will haunt the reader long afterwards, like the remembrance of an old
German melody.

SHAKESPEARE'S PLACE AND INFLUENCE. Shakespeare holds, by general
acclamation, the foremost place in the world's literature, and his
overwhelming greatness renders it difficult to criticise or even to praise
him. Two poets only, Homer and Dante, have been named with him; but each of
these wrote within narrow limits, while Shakespeare's genius included all
the world of nature and of men. In a word, he is the universal poet. To
study nature in his works is like exploring a new and beautiful country; to
study man in his works is like going into a great city, viewing the motley
crowd as one views a great masquerade in which past and present mingle
freely and familiarly, as if the dead were all living again. And the
marvelous thing, in this masquerade of all sorts and conditions of men, is
that Shakespeare lifts the mask from every face, lets us see the man as he
is in his own soul, and shows us in each one some germ of good, some "soul
of goodness" even in things evil. For Shakespeare strikes no uncertain
note, and raises no doubts to add to the burden of your own. Good always
overcomes evil in the long run; and love, faith, work, and duty are the
four elements that in all ages make the world right. To criticise or praise
the genius that creates these men and women is to criticise or praise
humanity itself.

Of his influence in literature it is equally difficult to speak. Goethe
expresses the common literary judgment when he says, "I do not remember
that any book or person or event in my life ever made so great an
impression upon me as the plays of Shakespeare." His influence upon our own
language and thought is beyond calculation. Shakespeare and the King James
Bible