In our own country the practice of crowning the dead and of strewing their graves with flowers has prevailed from a very early period, a custom which has been most pathetically and with much grace described by Shakespeare in "Cymbeline" (Act iv.

In any case most methods of reading between its lines would, if similarly applied, convict Sophocles, Schiller, and Shelley of incest, Shakespeare of murder, Milton of blasphemy, Scott of forgery, Marlowe and Goethe of compacts with the devil.

He read Shakespeare to his mother, and Byron and Pope, and his favourite "Lalla Rookh" and Bishop Heber and Mrs. Hemans, and about this period of his existence began to write verses of his own.

Indeed, he is our only author preceding Shakespeare with whom we feel thoroughly at home.

Perhaps the quartos contain Shakespeare's own correction of his own inadvertence; but those of us, and we are many, who have been blamed by northern patriots for the misuse of the word English may claim Shakespeare as a brother in misfortune.

" "Yes, that's a good one," said Marian; "it's called 'Shakespeare at the Seashore.'" "The name is enough to condemn that piece," said Mr. Fairfield; "not one of you can say it straight.

[Footnote 2: So far was Shakespeare from ignoring the act-division that it is a question whether his art did not sometimes suffer from the supposed necessity of letting a fourth act intervene between the culmination in the third act and the catastrophe in the fifth.

Even literary characters were not without them, Shakespeare for example, had adopted the Falcon rising argent, supporting a spear, in pale.

Of the last, two editions were published in 1600, the one with, and the other without, the name of Shakespeare on the title-page; but Mr Malone discovered, from the Registers of the Stationers' Company, that he was not concerned in it.

This method of studying Shakespeare by reading him has perhaps gone somewhat out of vogue in favour of more roundabout ways of approach, but it is the best method for all that.

He is more nearly a dwarf Shakespeare than a giant Popo.

In his poem, The Schoolboy, he enters as sympathetically as Shakespeare into the heart of the boy on his way to school, when he hears the call of the uncaged birds and the fields.

No intelligent person can study Shakespeare without becoming a deeper and more varied thinker, without securing a broader comprehension of human existence,its struggles, failures, and successes.

Witness his VENUS and ADONIS; his LUCRECE; his sugared Sonnets, among his private friends; &c. As PLAUTUS and SENECA are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins: so SHAKESPEARE among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage.

HARRISON, G. B. Shakespeare under Elizabeth.

A little girl friend of mine chanced to begin her reading of Shakespeare during a winter when her grown-up relatives were spending a large portion of their leisure going to see stage representations of Shakespeare's plays.

Returning to Paris, he found the city in a spasm of enthusiasm over Shakespeare, especially over the Irish actress Smithson, whom he had worshipped from afar, before he had gone to Rome, thinking that he only worshipped Shakespeare through the prophetess.

As Romanticist, it was Schlegel's office to portray the independent development of the modern English stage, and to defend Shakespeare against the familiar accusations of barbaric crudity and formlessness.

[Footnote 1: Once when Allen was rehearsing the supers in the Church Scene in "Much Ado about Nothing," we overheard him show the sense in Shakespeare like this: "This 'Ero let me tell you is a perfect lady, a nice, innercent young thing, and when the feller she's engaged to calls 'er an 'approved wanton,' you naturally claps yer 'ands to yer swords.

We feel in much closer touch with Shakespeare after merely reading about Stratford-on-Avon; but we seem to share his experiences when we actually walk from Stratford-on-Avon to Shottery and Warwick.

William Shakespeare Per Aspera.................................