We suspect that Shakespeare will long continue the only specimen of the genus. His contemporaries, in their comedies, either force what they call “a humour” till it becomes fantastical, or hunt for jokes, like rat-catchers, in the sewers of human nature and of language. In their tragedies they become heavy without grandeur, like Jonson, or mistake the stilts for the cothurnus, as Chapman and Webster too often do. Every new edition of an Elizabethan dramatist is but the putting of another witness into the box to prove the inaccessibility of Shakespeare’s standpoint as poet and artist. _Library of Old Authors._ 1858-64. For an interesting note on Shakespeare’s “artistic discretion” and the “impersonality” of his writings, see “Shakespeare once more” (_Among My Books._ 1870, pp. 226-7). NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 1863 (1804-1864) Shakespeare has surface beneath surface, to an immeasurable depth, adapted to the plummet-line of every reader; his works present many phases of truth, each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely discover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting the various interpretation of his symbols; and a thousand years hence, a world of new readers will possess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these volumes old already. _Our Old Home._ 1863, i. 171. In _Our Old Home_ (i. 158-60) Hawthorne records his impressions on visiting Shakespeare’s house. BISHOP CHARLES WORDSWORTH, 1864 (1806-1892) Take the entire range of English literature; put together our best authors, who have written upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, and we shall not find, I believe, in them _all united_, so much evidence of the Bible having been read and used, as we have found in Shakespeare _alone_. This is a phenomenon which admits of being looked at from several points of view; but I shall be content to regard it solely in connection with the undoubted fact, that of all our authors, Shakespeare is also, by general confession, the greatest and the best. According to the testimony of Charles Lamb, a most competent judge in regard to all the literary elements of the question, our poet, “in his divine mind and manners, surpassed not only the great men his contemporaries, but all mankind.” And, looking at this superiority from my own point of view, I cannot but remark that, while most of the great laymen of that great Elizabethan age—Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, the poet Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Burleigh, Ben Jonson—have paid homage to Christianity, if not always in their practice, yet in the conviction of their understanding, none of them has done this so fully or so effectively as Shakespeare. “_On Shakespeare’s Knowledge and Use of the Bible._” 1864, pp. 291-2. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1864 (1809-1894)