“Can’t I, then?” retorted Harrington, good-humoredly. “What do you think of Lear? Whose heart folds in poor Tom, the social outcast from the lowest sinks of the Elizabethan wretchedness? Who hurls forth that terrible invocation for the ‘superfluous and lust-dieted man that slaves Heaven’s ordinance—that will not see because he does not feel?’ Who prays for the ‘poor naked wretches that bide the peltings of the pitiless storm,’ and dwells so eloquently on ‘their houseless heads and unfed sides, their looped and windowed raggedness.’ Who is it, the impersonation of cold and callous conservatism, that is made, as Burke says, to ‘attend to the neglected and remember the forgotten,’ and comes face to face with houseless poverty and want to exclaim, ‘Oh, I have ta’en too little care of this?’ Who demands that the rich and fortunate shall expose themselves to ‘feel what wretches feel,’ in order that their superfluities may be shared with them, and justice be more the law of social life? And if this is not philanthropy, what is it?” “Say no more, Harrington, I cave,” replied Wentworth, gaily. “It is true,” pursued Harrington, “that the Shakspeare Drama has no figure of a philanthropist like Howard, no more than it has of a religious saint like Xavier or Monica. But I do not think that such portraitures would consist with the author’s design, which, however vast, is still special, having for its end the culture and cure of the human mind, and, as I have said, the reconstruction of society. Ah, but the true philanthropist, the true saint of that Drama is its author! No need to add such a figure to his pages when he himself stands there added to them by our thought, an image of the noblest love that ever strove and suffered for mankind.” They both sat in silence for a few moments, lost in musing. “It is strange,” said Wentworth, at length. “All we know about Shakspeare personally, is in conflict with what you have said—though I admit that his works sustain your view. He seems to have lived a very common-place and vulgar sort of a life. Certainly, his biography does not show that he had large sympathies and designs for man, and it is indisputable that he did not participate in the loftier life of his age.”