re incorporated in our common conversation;
he is our every-day companion. To eulogize him to the reading public is

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To lend a perfume to the violet ...

The Bible and Shakspeare have been long conjoined as the two most
necessary books in a family library; and Mrs. Cowden Clarke, the author of
the Concordance to Shakspeare, has pointedly and truthfully said: "A poor
lad, possessing no other book, might on this single one make himself a
gentleman and a scholar: a poor girl, studying no other volume, might
become a lady in heart and soul."

MEAGRE EARLY HISTORY.--It is passing strange, considering the great value
of his writings, and his present fame, that of his personal history so
little is known. In the words of Steevens, one of his most successful
commentators: "All that is known, with any degree of certainty, concerning
Shakspeare, is--that he was born at Stratford upon Avon--married and had
children there--went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote poems
and plays--returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried."

This want of knowledge is in part due to his obscure youth, during which
no one could predict what he would afterward achieve, and therefore no one
took notes of his life: to his own apparent ignorance and carelessness of
his own merits, and to the low repute in which plays, and especially
playwrights, were then held; although they were in reality making their
age illustrious in history. The pilgrim to Stratford sees the little low
house in which he is said to have been born, purchased by the nation, and
now restored into a smart cottage: within are a few meagre relics of the
poet's time; not far distant is the foundation--recently uncovered--of his
more ambitious residence in New Place, and a mulberry-tree, which probably
grew from a slip of that which he had planted with his own hand. Opposite
is the old Falcon Inn, where he made his daily potations. Very near rises,
above elms and lime-trees, the spire of the beautiful church on the bank
of the Avon, beneath the chancel of which his remains repose, with those
of his wife and daughter, overlooked by his bust, of which no one knows
the maker or the history, except that it dates from his own time. His bust
is of life-size, and was originally painted to imitate nature--eyes of
hazel, hair and beard auburn, doublet scarlet, and sleeveless gown of
black. Covered by a false taste with wh