SHAKESPEARE alone, when the object requires it, is always keen and worldly and practical; and yet, without changing his hand or stopping his course, scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds and shapes of sweetness, and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with Spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace. He is a thousand times more full of fancy and imagery and splendor than those who, in pursuit of such enchantments, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom and ridicule and sagacity than all the moralists and satirists that ever existed, he is also more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world. And he has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason, nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Everything in him is in unmeasured abundance and unequaled perfection; but everything is so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, without loading, the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets; but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their creator. HOME. HENRY W. GRADY. HENRY W. GRADY was born in Georgia in 1851. While a student at the University of Georgia, he excelled in debate. On graduation, he determined to make journalism his life-work. As the editor of the “Atlanta Constitution,” he rapidly grew into prominence as a journalist and an orator. Mr. Grady died in 1889.