[Footnote 2: Shakespeare's line expired in his daughter's only daughter. Several of the descendants of Shakespeare's sister Joan, bearing a strong family likeness to the great poet, were, so late as 1852, living in and about Stratford, chiefly in a state of indigence.] [Footnote 3: I have no doubt whatever that Homer is a mere concrete name for the rhapsodies of the Iliad. Of course there was a Homer, and twenty besides. I will engage to compile twelve books, with characters just as distinct and consistent as those of the Iliad, from the metrical ballads and other chronicles of England, about Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.--_Coleridge._] [Footnote 4: They must needs be men of lofty stature, whose shadows lengthen out to remote posterity.--_Hazlitt._] [Footnote 5: The Edinburgh "Review," once the most formidable of critical journals, took its motto from Publius Syrus:-- "Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvetur."] [Footnote 6: The kindly human sympathy exhibited by Terence contributed largely to the popularity of his dramas. Whenever the often-quoted words, "I am a man; and I have an interest in everything that concerns humanity," were spoken upon the Roman stage, they were received with tumultuous applause by all classes.] [Footnote 7: Crassus, a Roman triumvir, noted for his great wealth, who lived about a hundred years before the Christian Era, bought and sold slaves. These he educated, and taught the highest accomplishments of the day, sparing no labor or expense for the purpose. These educated slaves were then sold for large sums of money, so that any rich man could own his private poet and scholar. We are told by Plutarch that some of these slaves brought enormous prices into the treasury of Crassus.] [Footnote 8: "What can they see in the longest kingly line in Europe," asks Sir Walter Scott, "save that it runs back to a successful soldier?"] [Footnote 9: When approached by Madame de Tencin, who was finally eager to acknowledge so distinguished a son, he replied:-- "Je ne connais qu'une mère, c'est la vitrière."] [Footnote 10: I knew a very wise man that believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.--_Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun._] [Footnote 11: Rachel made her debut at the Théâtre Français of Paris, in 1838. She came to this country in 1855, and performed in our Eastern cities. Three years later she died of consumption, near Cannes, in the South of France. When she was giving one of her readings before the Duke of Wellington, she perceived that all her audience were ignorant of the French language except the Duke himself. She went on, however, at her best, consoling herself that he at least understood her. After it was over, the Duke approached the great actress, and said: "Mademoiselle, our guests have had a great advantage over me; they have had the happiness of hearing you: I am as deaf as a post."]