[7] Mr. Charles Francis Adams informs me that a letter of inquiry sent by him to the _Evening Post_ has brought out three or four references to Milton in the “Magnalia,” besides other allusions to him in the publications of the period. Mr. Adams adds, however, that there is nothing to show that “Paradise Lost” was much read in New England prior to 1750. The “Magnalia” was published in 1702. SHAKESPEARE’S CONTEMPORARIES THE one contribution of the Elizabethan stage to the literature of the world is the plays of Shakespeare. It seems unaccountable to us to-day that the almost infinite superiority of his work to that of all his contemporaries was not recognized in his own lifetime. There is frequent mention in the literature of his time, of “the excellent dramatic writer, Master Wm. Shakespeare” and usually in the way of praise, but in the same category with other excellent dramatic writers, like Jonson, Chapman, Webster, and Beaumont, and with no apparent suspicion that he is in a quite different class from these, and forms indeed a class by himself—is _sui generis_. In explanation of this blindness it should be said, first that time is required to give the proper perspective to literary values, and secondly that there is an absence of critical documents from the Elizabethan period. There were no reviews or book notices or literary biographies. A man in high place who was incidentally an author, a great philosopher and statesman like Bacon, a diplomatist and scholar like Sir Henry Wotton, a bishop or a learned divine, like Sanderson, Donne or Herbert, might be thought worthy to have his life recorded. But a mere man of letters—still more a mere playwriter—was not entitled to a biography. Nowadays every writer of fair pretensions has his literary portrait in the magazines. His work is criticized, assayed, analyzed; and as soon as he is dead, his life and letters appear in two volumes. We do not know what Shakespeare’s contemporaries thought of him, except for a few complimentary verses, and a few brief notices scattered through the miscellaneous books and pamphlets of the time; and these in no wise characterize or distinguish him, or set him apart from the crowd of fellow playwrights, from among whom he has since so thoroughly emerged. Aside from the almost universal verdict of posterity that Shakespeare is one of the greatest, if not actually the greatest literary genius of all time, there are two testimonies to his continued vitality. One of these is the fact that his plays have never ceased to be played. At least twenty of his plays still belong to the acted drama. Several of the others, less popular, are revived from time to time. We do not often have a chance in England or America to see “Troilus and Cressida,” or “Measure for Measure,” or “Richard II”—all pieces of the highest intellectual interest—to see them behind the footlights. But all of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays are given annually in Germany.