shmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear 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 fifteen hundred 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
commonplace 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 cart-loads (of
guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that
is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is