duced all his greatest masterpieces after that date. About 1611 he retired to his native town to live in quiet domestic enjoyment. How great the contrast with the excitements, labors, and vanities of his career in London! The last five years of his life were spent in domestic comforts, local interests, the entertainment of friends, the composition of one or two great dramas, with an occasional visit to the scene of his former struggles and triumphs. He died April 23, 1616, on the anniversary of his birth, and was buried in the parish church of Stratford. If we may

credit tradition, he rose from sick bed to entertain Jonson and Drayton, and the convivial excesses of the occasion brought on a fatal relapse. His tomb bears the following inscription : —

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,

To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."

Summing up his character, as gleaned from hints scattered through the scanty biographic materials, Hudson justly says: "There is enough, I think, to show that in all the common dealings of life he was eminently gentle, candid, upright, and judicious; open-hearted, genial, and sweet in his social intercourses; among his companions and friends full of playful wit and sprightly grace; kind to the faults of others, severe to his own; quick to discern and acknowledge merit in another, modest and slow of finding it in himself; while, in the smooth and happy marriage, which he seems to have realized, of the highest poetry and art with successful and systematic prudence in

business affairs, we have an example of compact and wellrounded practical manhood, such as may justly engage our admiration and respect."

Were the meagre facts in the outward life of this great man all that we know of him, how incomplete and unsatisfactory our knowledge! But there is another life besides the outward and visible one a life of the soul. It is by the aims, thoughts, and feelings of this interior life that the character and greatness of a man are to be judged. Outward circumstances are, in a large measure, fortuitous; at most they but aid or hinder the operations of the spirit within plume or clip its wings. It is when we turn to this interior life of Shakespeare, and measure its creations and experiences, that we learn his unapproachable greatness. Many other authors have surpassed him in the variety and splendor of outward circumstances; many warriors and statesmen and princes have been occupied with larger national interests; but where is the man that can compare with him in the richness and extent of this life of the soul?

There is no class of society, from kings to beggars, from queens to hags, with which he has not entered into the closest sympathy, thinking their thoughts and speaking their words. By his overpowering intuition, he comprehended, in all their extent, the various hopes, fears, desires, and passions of the human heart; and, as occasion arose, he gave them the most perfect utterance they have ever found. Every age and country-early England, mediæval Italy, ancient Greece and Rome - were all seized in their essential features.

There were no thoughts too high for his strong intellect

to grasp; and the great world of nature, with its mysteries, its abounding beauty, its subtle harmonies, its deep moral teachings, he irradiated with the light of his genius. If, as a poet has said, "we live in thoughts, not years, in feelings, not in figures on the dial," how infinitely rich the quarter of a century Shakespeare spent in London! In comparison with his all-embracing experience, the career of an Alexander, or Cæsar, or Napoleon, with its far extending ambition and manifold interests, loses its towering greatness; for the English poet lived more than they all.

One great ground of Shakespeare's preeminence is his sanity. He was singularly free from the eccentricity and one-sidedness that so often accompany genius. His marvellous power in seeing clearly and judging justly will be more clearly understood by comparing him with recent schools or tendencies in literature. For nearly a century the literary world has been divided into romanticists and realists. The former emphasize the ideal side of life, and in extreme types run into extravagance; the latter emphasize what is actual in life, often showing preference for the low and immoral. Both tendencies represent truth in part; but in Shakespeare we find them held in equal balance. The ideal and the real are harmoniously blended in him as in actual life. He saw and judged life in its completeness.

It is a mistake to suppose that Shakespeare owed everything to nature, and that in his productions he was guided alone by instinct. This view was maintained by his earliest biographer, Rowe, who says: "Art had so little, and nature so large a share in what Shakespeare did, that for aught I know the performances of his youth were the best."

But Ben Jonson shows a keener discernment:

"Yet must I not give Nature all: thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For a good Poet's made, as well as born,
And such wert thou."

An examination of his works in their chronological order shows that his genius underwent a process of development, and was perfected by study, knowledge, and experience. His earliest dramas, such as "Henry VI.," "Love's Labor's Lost," "Comedy of Errors," and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," all of which were composed prior to 1591, are lacking in the freedom and perfection of his later works. They show the influence of the contemporary stage, and declamation often takes the place of genuine passion.

But after this apprentice work, the poet passed into the full possession of his powers, and produced, during what may be regarded the middle period of his literary career, an uninterrupted succession of masterpieces, among which may be mentioned "The Merchant of Venice," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Romeo and Juliet," "As You Like It," "Hamlet," and most of his English historical plays. All these appeared before 1600. With increasing age and experience, the poet passed on to profounder themes. It was during this final stage of his development that he gave "King Lear," "Macbeth," and "Othello" to the world, the two former in 1605 and the latter in 1609.

But in one particular his earlier and his later dramas are alike. The personality of the poet is concealed in them all. He enters into sympathy with all his creations, but he can be identified with none. He is greater than any one