them bondmen and bondwomen for ever. We should sell our own flesh and blood, and have the right to kill our slaves. Men and women should be stoned to death for labouring on the seventh day. "Mediums," such as have familiar spirits, should be burned with fire. Every vestige of mental liberty should be destroyed, and reason's holy torch extinguished in the martyr's blood.

Is it not far better and wiser to say that the Pentateuch, while containing some good laws, some truths, some wise and useful things, is, after all, deformed and blackened by the savagery of its time? Is it not far better and wiser to take the good and throw the bad away?

Let us admit what we know to be true: that Moses was mistaken about a thousand things; that the story of creation is not true; that the garden of Eden is a myth; that the serpent and the tree of knowledge and the fall of man are but fragments of old mythologies lost and dead; that woman was not made out of a rib; that serpents never had the power of speech; that the sons of God did not marry the daughters of men; that the story of the flood and the ark is not exactly true; that the tower of Babel is a mistake; that the confusion of tongues is a childish thing; that the origin of the rainbow is a foolish fancy; that Methuselah did not live nine hundred and sixty-nine years; that Enoch did not leave this world, taking with him his flesh and bones; that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is somewhat improbable; that burning brimstone never fell like rain; that Lot's wife was not changed into chloride of sodium; that Jacob did not, in fact, put his hip out of joint wrestling with God; that the history of Tamar might just as well have been left out; that a belief in Pharaoh's dreams is not essential to salvation; that it makes but little difference whether the rod of Aaron was changed into a serpent or not; that, of all the wonders said to have been performed in Egypt, the greatest is that anybody ever believed the absurd account; that God did not torment the

innocent cattle on account of the sins of their owners; that he did not kill the first-born of the poor maid behind the mill because of Pharaoh's crimes; that flies and frogs were not ministers of God's wrath; that lice and locusts were not the executors of his will; that seventy people did not, in two hundred and fifteen years, increase to three millions; that three priests could not eat six hundred pigeons in a day; that gazing at a brass serpent could not extract poison from the blood; that God did not go into partnership with hornets; that he did not murder people simply because they asked for something to eat; that he did not declare the making of hair-oil and ointment an offence to be punished with death; that he did not miraculously preserve cloth and leather; that he was not afraid of wild beasts; that he did not punish heresy with sword and fire; that he was not jealous, revengeful, and unjust; that he knew all about the sun, moon, and stars; that he did not threaten to kill people for eating the fat of an ox; that he never told Aaron to draw lots to see which of two goats should be killed; that he never objected to clothes made of woollen mixed with linen; that if he objected to dwarfs, people with flat noses, and too many fingers, he ought not to have created such folks; that he did not demand human sacrifice, as set forth in the last chapter of Leviticus; that he did not object to the raising of horses; that he never commanded widows to spit in the faces of their brothers-in-law; that several contradictory accounts of the same transaction cannot all be true; that God did not talk to Abraham as one man talks to another; that angels were not in the habit of walking about the earth eating veal dressed with milk and butter, and making bargains about the destruction of cities; that God never turned himself into a flame of fire and lived in a bush; that he never met Moses in an hotel and tried to kill him; that it was absurd to perform miracles to induce a king to act in a certain way, and then harden his heart so that he would refuse;

VShakespeare's father seems to have been an ordinary man of his time and class. About the only thing we know of him is that he was officially reported for not coming monthly to church. This is good as far as it goes. We can hardly blame him, because at that time Richard Bifield was the minister at Stratford, and an extreme Puritan, one who read the Psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins.

The church was at one time Catholic, but in John Shakespeare's day it was Puritan; and in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, they had the images defaced. It is greatly to the honour of John Shakespeare that he refused to listen to the "tidings of great joy" as delivered by the Puritan Bifield.

Nothing is known of his mother except her beautiful name-Mary Arden. In those days but little attention was given to the biographies of women. They were born, married, had children, and died. No matter how celebrated their sons became, the mothers were forgotten. In old times, when a man achieved distinction, great pains were taken to find out about the father and grandfather—the idea being that genius is inherited from the father's side. The truth is, that all great men have had great mothers. Great women have had,

as a rule, great fathers.

The mother of Shakespeare was, without doubt, one of the greatest of women. She dowered her son with passion and imagination and the higher qualities of the soul, beyond all other men. It has been said that a man of genius should select his ancestors with great care; and yet there does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think. The children of the great are often small. Pigmies are born in palaces, while over

In his day Shakespeare was of no particular importance. It may be that his mother had some marvellous and prophetic dreams, but Stratford was unconscious of the immortal child. He was never engaged in a reputable business. Socially he occupied a position below servants. The law described him as "a sturdy vagabond." He was neither a noble, a soldier, nor a priest. Among the half-civilised people of England he who amused and instructed them was regarded as a menial. Kings had their clowns, the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius. Mozart was patronised by an Archbishop lived in the palace-but was pelled to eat with the scullions.

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The composer of divine melodies was not fit to sit by the side of the theologian, who long ago would have been forgotten but for the fame of the composer.

We know but little of the personal peculiarities, of the daily life, or of what may be called the outward Shakespeare, and it may be fortunate that so little is known. He might have been belittled by friendly fools. What silly stories, what idiotic personal reminiscences, would have been remembered by those who scarcely saw him! We have his best-his sublimest—and we have probably lost only the trivial and the worthless. All that is known can be written on a page.

We are tolerably certain of the date of his birth, of his marriage, and of his death. We think he went to London in 1586, when he was twenty-two years old. We think that three years afterwards he was part owner of Blackfriars' Theatre. We have a few signatures, some of which are supposed to be genuine. We know that he bought some land—that he had two or three law-suits. We know the

names of his children. We also know that this incomparable man-so apart from, and so familiar with, all the world -lived during his literary life in London; that he was an actor, dramatist, and manager; that he returned to Stratford, the place of his birth; that he gave his writings to negligence, deserted the children of his brain; that he died on the anniversary of his birth at the age of fifty-two, and that he was buried in the church where the images had been defaced, and that on his tomb was chiselled a rude, absurd, and ignorant epitaph.

No letter of his to any human being has been found, and no line written by him can be shown.

And here let me give my explanation of the epitaph. Shakespeare was an actor -a disreputable business; but he made money always reputable. He came back from London a rich man. He bought land, and built houses. Some of the supposed great probably treated him with deference. When he died he was buried in the church. Then came a reaction. The pious thought the church had been profaned, They did not feel that the ashes of an actor were fit to lie in holy ground. The people began to say the body ought to be removed. Then it was, as I believe, that Dr. John Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-law, had this epitaph cut on the tomb :

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To digg the dust enclosed heare: Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones, And curst be he yt moves my bones." Certainly Shakespeare could have had no fear that his tomb would be violated. How could it have entered his mind to have put a warning, a threat, and a blessing upon his grave? But the ignorant people of that day were no doubt convinced that the epitaph was the voice of the dead, and, so feeling, they feared to invade the tomb. In this way the dust was left in peace.

This epitaph gave me great trouble for years. It puzzled me to explain why he, who erected the intellectual pyramids

great ranges of mountains-should put such a pebble at his tomb. But when I stood beside the grave and read the ignorant words, the explanation I have given flashed upon me.

II.

It has been said that Shakespeare was hardly mentioned by his contemporaries, and that he was substantially unknown. This is a mistake. In 1600 a book was published called England's Parnassus, and it contained ninety extracts from Shakespeare. In the same year was published the Garden of the Muses, containing several pieces from Shakespeare, Chapman, Marston, and Ben Jonson. England's Helicon was printed in the same year, and contained poems from Spenser, Greene, Harvey, and Shakespeare.

In 1600 a play was acted at Cambridge, in which Shakespeare was alluded to as follows: "Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare who puts them all down." John Weaver published a book of poems in 1595, in which there was a sonnet to Shakespeare. In 1598 Richard Bamfield wrote a poem to Shakespeare. Francis Meres, "clergyman, master of arts in both universities, compiler of school books," was the author of the Wits' Treasury. In this he compares the ancient and modern tragic poets, and mentions Marlowe, Peele, Kyd, and Shakespeare. So he compares the writers of comedies, and mentions Lilly, Lodge, Greene, and Shakespeare. He speaks of elegiac poets, and names Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Raleigh, and Shakespeare. He compares the lyric poets, and names Spenser, Drayton, Shakespeare, and others. This same writer, speaking of Horace, says that England has Sidney, Shakespeare, and others, and that "as the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet-wittie soul of Ovid lives in the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare." He also says: "If the muses. could speak English, they would speak in Shakespeare's phrase."