d thrill the world with truth and love
Derived from nature far above._

Shakspere's mind was pinioned with celestial imagination, and his rushing
flight circled the shores of omnipotence. He taught us that ignorance was a
crime, a murky night without a single star to light the traveler on his
weary way.

Those who have attempted to fathom the depths of the Shaksperian ocean of
thought, have only rounded the rim or skimmed over the surface of its
illimitable magnificence. Tossed about by the billows of Shakspere's brain,
for three hundred and forty years mankind like a ship in a storm, still
wonders and runs on the reefs of his understanding, to be wrecked in their
vain calculation of his divine wisdom.

Leaving the beaten paths of oriental and middle age writers, he dashed deep
into the forest of nature and surveyed for himself a new dominion of
thought, that has never been occupied before or since his birth. Like a
comet of universal light, he shines over the world with the warm glow of
celestial knowledge.

With the tuning key of his matchless genius he struck the chords of sorrow
to their inmost tone and played on the heart strings of joy with the tender
vibrations of an aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the
wild flowers of ecstatic passion.

And to clap the climax and fathom the logic of love, he eloquently
exclaims:

"Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds!"

J. A. J.

[Illustration]

Shakspere: Personal Recollections

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH. SCHOOL DAYS. SHOWS.

_"One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin."_

William Shakspere was born on the 23d of April, 1564, at the town of
Stratford, on the river Avon, Warwickshire County, England; and died in the
same town on the 23d of April, 1616, exactly fifty-two years of age, the
date of his birth being the date of his death, a remarkable coincidence of
spiritual assimilation.

For several centuries, his ancestors served their king and crown in war and
peace; and were noted in their day and age as country "gentlemen," a term
much more significant then than now, when even dressed up "dandy" frauds
may lay claim to this much-abused title.

The grandfather of Shakspere fought on Bosworth Field with King Henry the
Seventh, and was rewarded for his military service, leaving to his son
John, the father of the "Divine" William, influence enough to secure the
position of a country squire and made him baili