Indeed, your literary institutes must everywhere fail, as long as you think that merely to buy a book, and to know your letters, will enable you to read the book. Not one word of any book is readable by you except so far as your mind is one with its author's, and not merely his words like your words, but his thoughts like your thoughts. For instance, the other day, at a bookstall, I bought a shilling Shakespeare. To such degree of wealth, ingenuity, and literary spirit, has the nineteenth century reached, that it has a shilling to spare for its Shakespeare--can produce its Shakespeare in a pocketable shape for that sum--and is ready to invest its earnings in a literature to that extent. Good. You have now your Shakespeare, complete, in your pocket; you will read the greatest of dramatic authors at your leisure, and form your literary taste on that model. Suppose we read a line or two together then, you and I;--it may be, that I cannot, unless you help me. "And there, at Venice, gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his Captain, Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long." What do you suppose Shakespeare means by calling Venice a "pleasant" country? What sort of country was, or would have been, pleasant to him? The same that is pleasant to you, or another kind of country? Was there any coal in that earth of Venice, for instance? Any gas to be made out of it? Any iron? Again. What does Shakespeare mean by a "pure" soul, or by Purity in general? How does a soul become pure, or clean, and how dirty? Are you sure that your own soul is pure? if not, is its opinion on the subject of purity likely to be the same as Shakespeare's? And might you not just as well read a mure soul, or demure, or a scure soul, or obscure, as a pure soul, if you don't know what Shakespeare means by the word? Again. What does Shakespeare mean by a captain, or head-person? What were his notions of head-ship, shoulder-ship, or foot-ship, either in human or divine persons? Have you yourselves ever seen a captain, think you--of the true quality; (see above, xxii. 18;) and did you know him when you saw him? Or again. What does Shakespeare mean by colours? The "gaily decorative bunting" of Howe and Cushing's American Circus? Or the banners with invigorating inscriptions concerning Temperance and Free-trade, under which you walk in procession, sometimes, after a band? Or colours more dim and tattered than these? What he does mean, in all these respects, we shall best understand by reading a little bit of the history of one of those English Squires, named above, for our study; (xxii. 18,) Edward III. of England, namely; since it was he who first quartered our arms for us; whom I cannot more honourably first exhibit to you than actually fighting under captainship and colours of his own choice, in the fashion Shakespeare meant.