For what remains to me of life I trust for my happiness still chiefly to my work--hoping that when the power of work be over with me, God may be pleased to take me from a world in which, according to my view, there can be no joy; secondly, to the love of those who love me; and then to my books. That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I remember, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left,--something dim and inaccurate,--but still something sufficient to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers. Of late years, putting aside the Latin classics, I have found my greatest pleasure in our old English dramatists,--not from any excessive love of their work, which often irritates me by its want of truth to nature, even while it shames me by its language,--but from curiosity in searching their plots and examining their character. If I live a few years longer, I shall, I think, leave in my copies of these dramatists, down to the close of James I., written criticisms on every play. No one who has not looked closely into it knows how many there are. Now I stretch out my hand, and from the further shore I bid adieu to all who have cared to read any among the many words that I have written.