lear back to the
first Tudors--a list containing five hundred names, shall we say?--and
you can go to the histories, biographies and cyclopedias and learn the
particulars of the lives of every one of them. Every one of them except
one--the most famous, the most renowned--by far the most illustrious of
them all--Shakespeare! You can get the details of the lives of all the
celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians,
comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists,
historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen,
generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates,
conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers,
explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers,
naturalists, Claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists,
philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers,
painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists,
patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars,
highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons--you can get the
life-histories of all of them but _one_. Just one--the most
extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all--Shakespeare!

You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the
rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find out the
life-histories of all those people, too. You will then have listed 1500
celebrities, and you can trace the authentic life-histories of the whole
of them. Save one--far and away the most colossal prodigy of the entire
accumulation--Shakespeare! About him you can find out _nothing_.
Nothing of even the slightest importance. Nothing worth the trouble of
stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that
he was ever anything more than a distinctly common-place person--a
manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village
that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten
all about him before he was fairly cold in his grave. We can go to the
records and find out the life-history of every renowned _race-horse_ of
modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There are many reasons why, and
they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess and conjecture) by those
troglodytes; but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons
put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself-