In such a night Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night. If we share the imaginings of the poet, we shall seem to see before us the sheen of the weather-stained Grecian tents, silvered by the moonlight there below the wall where we stand,--we shall seem to stretch unavailing arms toward that far corner of the camp where Cressid must be sleeping,--we shall feel a sigh swell our bosom, and our throat contract. In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew, And saw the lion's shadow ere himself, And ran dismayed away. The realizing reader moves with timorous eagerness to meet Pyramus, feeling under foot the dew-wet grass and on the cheek the soft night wind, and suddenly, with that awful chill of fright which is like an actual grasp upon the heart, to see the shadow of the lion silhouetted on the turf. He sees with the double vision of the imagination the shrinking, terror-smitten Thisbe, arrested by the shadow at her feet, while also he seems to look through her eyes at the beast which has called up her gaze from the shade to the reality. He trembles with her in a brief-long instant, and then flees in dismay. Now all this is almost sure to seem to you to be rather closely allied to that pest of teachers of composition which is known as "fine writing." I realize that my comment obscures the text with what is likely to seem a mist of sentimentality. There are two reasons why this should be so,--two, I mean, besides the obvious necessity of failure when we attempt to translate Shakespeare into our own language. In the first place, the feelings involved belong to the elevated, poetic mood, and not at all to dry lecturing. In the second place, and what is of more importance, these emotions can be fairly and effectively conveyed only by suggestion. It is not by specifying love, passion, hate, fear, suspense, and the like, that an author brings them keenly to the mind; but by arousing the reader's imagination to create them. It follows that in insisting upon the necessity of understanding what is connoted as well as what is denoted in what one reads, I am but calling attention to the fact that this is the only way in which the most significant message of a writer may be understood at all. The best of literature must be received by suggestion or missed altogether.