W. H. Furness, the eminent American scholar, who was the father of
the Editor of the Variorum Edition of Shakespeare's Works, wrote to
Nathaniel Holmes in a letter dated Oct. 29th 1866: "I am one of the many
who have never been able to bring the life of William Shakespeare and
the plays of Shakespeare within planetary space of each other. Are there
any two things in the world more incongruous? Had the plays come down to
us anonymously, had the labor of discovering the author been imposed
upon after generations, I think we could have found no one of that day
but F. Bacon to whom to assign the crown. In this case it would have
been resting now on his head by almost common consent."
MARK TWAIN, b. 1835, d. 1910.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote under the pseudonym of Mark Twain,
was,--it is universally admitted,--one of the wisest of men. Last year
(1909) he published a little book with the title, "Is Shakespeare dead?"
In this he treats with scathing scorn those who can persuade themselves
that the immortal plays were written by the Stratford clown. He writes,
pp. 142-3: "You can trace the life histories of the whole of them [the
world's celebrities] save one far and away the most colossal prodigy of
the entire accumulation--Shakespeare.
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