our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

His Influence on Thought.--With the exception of the _Scriptures_,
Shakespeare's dramas have surpassed all other works in molding modern
English thought. If a person should master Shakespeare and the
_Bible_, he would find most that is greatest in human thought, outside
of the realm of science.

Even when we do not read him, we cannot escape the influence of others
who have been swayed by him. For generations, certain modes of thought
have crystallized about his phrases. We may instance such expressions
as these: "Brevity is the soul of wit." "What's in a name?" "The wish
was father to the thought." "The time is out of joint." "There's the
rub." "There's a divinity that shapes our ends." "Comparisons are
odorous." It would, perhaps, not be too much to say that the play of
_Hamlet_ has affected the thought of the majority of the
English-speaking race. His grip on Anglo-Saxon thought has been
increasing for more than three hundred years.

Shakespeare's influence on the thought of any individual has only two
circumscribing factors,--the extent of Shakespearean study and the
capacity of interpreting the facts of life. 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. If we have before viewed humanity
through a glass darkly, Shakespeare will gradually lead us where we
can see face to face the beauty and the grandeur of the mystery of
existence. His most valuable influence often consists in rendering his
students sympathetic and in making them feel a sense of kinship with
life. Shakespeare's readers more quickly realize that human nature
shows the shaping touch of divinity. They have the rare joy of
discovering the world anew and of exclaiming with Miranda:--

"How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!"[28]

When we have really become acquainted with Shakespeare, our lives will
be less prosaic and restricted. After intimate companionship with him,
there will be, in the words of Ariel, hardly any common thing in
life--

"But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."[29]

BEN JONSON, 1573?-1637

[Illustration: BEN JONSON. _From the portrait by Gerard Honthorst,
National Portrait Gallery_.]

Life.--About nine years after the birt