w many things remain! Of almost any distinguished character how much
more is known than of Shakspeare! There is not, so far as I can
discover, an authentic relic of any thing belonging to him. There are
very few anecdotes of his sayings or doings; no letters, no private
memoranda, that should let us into the secret of what he was personally
who has in turns personated all minds. The very perfection of his
dramatic talent has become an impenetrable veil: we can no more tell
from his writings what were his predominant tastes and habits than we
can discriminate among the variety of melodies what are the native notes
of the mocking bird. The only means left us for forming an opinion of
what he was personally are inferences of the most delicate nature from,
the slightest premises.

The common idea which has pervaded the world, of a joyous, roving,
somewhat unsettled, and dissipated character, would seem, from many
well-authenticated facts, to be incorrect. The gayeties and dissipations
of his life seem to have been confined to his very earliest days, and to
have been the exuberance of a most extraordinary vitality, bursting into
existence with such force and vivacity that it had not had time to
collect itself, and so come to self-knowledge and control. By many
accounts it would appear that the character he sustained in the last
years of his life was that of a judicious, common-sense sort of man; a
discreet, reputable, and religious householder.

The inscription on his tomb is worthy of remark, as indicating the
reputation he bore at the time: "_Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte
Maronem_" (In judgment a Nestor, in genius a Socrates, in art a
Virgil.)

The comparison of him in the first place to Nestor, proverbially famous
for practical judgment and virtue of life, next to Socrates, who was a
kind of Greek combination of Dr. Paley and Dr. Franklin, indicates a
very different impression of him from what would generally be expressed
of a poet, certainly what would not have been placed on the grave of an
eccentric, erratic will-o'-the-wisp genius, however distinguished.
Moreover, the pious author of good Mistress Hall's epitaph records the
fact of her being "wise to salvation," as a more especial point of
resemblance to her father than even her being "witty above her sex," and
expresses most confident hope of her being with him in bliss. The
Puritan tone of the epitaph, as well as the quality of the verse, gives
reason to s