, her great talent is the
least admirable thing about her; but no one but us knows that."

Doubtless if letters of Shakespeare's could be found, letters developing
the mystery of those sorrowful sonnets, or even letters describing his
daily dealings with his children, and Mistress Anne Hathaway, his wife;
nay, even the fashion, color, and texture of the hangings of "the
second-best bed," her special inheritance, a frenzy of curiosity would
be aroused by them. All his glorious plays would not be worth
(bookseller's value) some scraps of thought and feeling, or mere
personal detail, or even commonplace (he must have been sovereignly
commonplace) impartment of theatrical business news and gossip to his
fellow-players, or Scotch Drummond, or my Lord Southampton, or the Dark
Woman of the sonnets. But we know little about him, thank Heaven! and I
am glad that little is not more.

I know he must have sinned and suffered, mortal man since he was, but I
do not wish to know how. From his plays, in spite of the necessarily
impersonal character of dramatic composition, we gather a vivid and
distinct impression of serene sweetness, wisdom, and power. In the
fragment of personal history which he gives us in his sonnets, the
reverse is the case; we have a painful impression of mournful struggling
with adverse circumstances and moral evil elements, and of the labor and
the love of his life alike bestowed on objects deemed by himself
unworthy; and in spite of his triumphant promise of immortality to the
false mistress or friend, or both, to whom (as far as he has revealed
them to us) he has kept his promise, we fall to pitying Shakespeare, the
bestower of immortality. In the great temple raised by his genius to his
own undying glory, one narrow door opens into a secret, silent crypt,
where his image, blurred and indistinct, is hardly discernible through
the gloomy atmosphere, heavy and dim as if with sighs and tears. Here is
no clew, no issue, and we return to the shrine filled with light and
life and warmth and melody; with knowledge and love of man, and worship
of God and nature. There is our benefactor and friend, simplest and most
lovable, though most wonderful of his kind; other image of him than that
bright one may the world never know!

The extraordinary development of the taste for petty details of personal
gossip which our present literature bears witness to makes it almost a
duty to destroy all letters not written for public