There is a story of a French scholar who made up his mind to write a great book on Shakespeare. In preparation he resolved to read all that had been written about the poet. He found that the accumulation of books on Shakespeare in the Paris libraries was a quarry which he could not excavate in a lifetime, and more appalling still, contemporary scholars and critics were producing books faster than he could read them. This story should console and instruct us. We cannot read all that has been written about Shakespeare; neither can the professional Shakespearians. But we can all read enough. Two or three books a year for ten years will, I am sure, put any student in possession of the best thought of the world on Shakespeare or any other writer. The multitude of works are repetitious, one volume repeats the best of a hundred others, and most of them are waste matter, even for the specialist who vainly strives to digest them. The thing for us to learn early is not to be appalled by the miles of shelves full of books, but to regard them in a cheerful spirit, to look at them as an interminable supply of spiritual food and drink, a comforting abundance that shall not tempt us to be gourmands. I am convinced that young people are often deterred from the study of books by professional students who preside over the long shelves in the twilight of libraries--blinking high priests of literature who seem to say: “Ah! young seeker of knowledge, here is the mystery of mysteries, where only a few of us after long and blinding study are qualified to dwell. For five and forty years I have been studying Shakespeare--whisper the name in reverence, not for him, but for me--and I have found that in the ‘Winter’s Tale’ a certain comma has been misplaced by preceding high priests, and the line should read thus and so.” Well, if you go inside and open a few windows to let the light and air in, you are likely to find, sitting in one of the airiest recesses, an acquaintance of yours, quite an ordinary person, who has read the “Winter’s Tale” for only five years, has not bothered his head about that blessed comma, can tell you things about the play that the high priest would not find out in a million years, and is using the high priest’s latest disquisition for a paper weight. So approach your Shakespeare, if he be the poet you select for special study in the next ten years, in a light-hearted and confident spirit. He _is_ a mystery, but he is not past finding out, and the elements of mystery that baffle, that deserve respect, are those which he chose to wrap about himself and his work. The mysteries which others have hung about him are moth-eaten hangings or modern slazy draperies that tear at a vigorous touch. If you hear learned literary muttering behind the arras and plunge your sword through, you will kill, not the king, but a commentator Polonius.