INTRODUCTORY NOTE. " NEXT to seeing a beautiful human life fade, flicker, and go out, unrecognized and unappreciated, is the sadness of seeing a beautiful book sink into the almost hopeless death of "out of print.' Indeed, the latter would be the sadder sight of the two, as a book is, or ought to be, the higher part, the very essence of a life, were it not that for the printed volume there is a possible earthly resurrection. And the second birth gives in itself a sign of appreciation, which pretty safely ensures a renewed and permanent life. This series of lectures or essays on the humanities in Shakespeare ought never to have disappeared from sight in a cultivated community. Books of Shakespearian study, too numerous to be counted, have been printed within ten years, and others will come from similar sources. Their true value depends on their spiritual insight, the intellectual mechanics being equal. This is the rare quality that has brought Henry Giles's book from the darkness to the dawn of another publication. It is a book of inestimable value to any one desiring a clear view, as it were, of Shakespeare's mind and method. As in the aquarium we stand outside the glass, or walk through crystal lanes, seeing within the wonders of the water-life; so are we led by the loving essayist into perception of the work of the great poet, and so directed by his wisdom into positions from which we see the springs of dramatic thought, and the living things moving in the creative mind. Forever of living interest to men must be “the personal existence of a poet who has fully revealed man, and entirely concealed himself." He whose genius assumed every form; who is the poet of war and peace, of love and hate, of cunning and simplicity, of city and country, of common life and fairyland; to this one universal and unstinted creature we surely ought to give extraordinary and studious attention. For this, leisure is the first need, or the setting aside of, perhaps, too many of our too few pleasant relaxations. Here lies, to the general reader, the value of the special student. Condensed, refined, tested, he gives into our hand the result of years of faithful investigation. The |
