Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/9



''That a sample or excerpt given from this book while as yet save in design unfinished should have found such favour in your sight and won such approval at your hands as you then by word alike and action so cordially expressed, is reason enough why I should inscribe it with your name: even if I felt less pleasure in the reflection and the record that this little labour of a lifelong love had at once the doubly good fortune and the doubly grateful success, to be praised by those who have earned the praise and thanks of all true Shakespearean scholars, and dispraised by such as have deserved their natural doom to reap neither but from the harvest of their own applause or that of their fellows. It might be hard for a personally unbiassed [sic] judgment to strike the balance of genuine value and significance between these two forms of acknowledgment: but it will be evident which is to me the more precious, when I write your name above my own on the votive scroll which attaches my offering to the shrine of Shakespeare.''

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.