Page:Appreciations of Horace Howard Furness.djvu/41

 Rh essays on Shakespeare's dogs, or oaths, or fire-arms, and who seemed unaware of the existence of a concordance, sought from him counsel and assistance. People who were good enough to believe that Shakespeare really wrote the plays attributed to him by his contemporaries, were anxious that Dr. Furness should be made aware of the liberal nature of their views. To one and all the great scholar lent a weary and patient ear. To one and all he gave more than their utmost dues.

A man of exquisite charity, speaking evil of none; a man of indestructible courtesy, whose home was open to his friends, whose scant leisure was placed at their disposal, whose kindness enveloped them like sunshine; yet none the less a man whose reserves—unsuspected by many—were proof against all; a past master of the art of hiding his soul, 'addicted to silent pleasures, accessible to silent pains.' It is not the portentous gravity of the Sphinx which defies the probe, but the smiling gayety which seems so free from guile. One had to know Dr. Furness long and intimately, to understand that his dominant note was dramatic, not personal, and that his facile speech betrayed nothing it was made to hide.

That the task upon which his life had been spent, and which his death left uncompleted, should be taken up by his son, was to Dr. Furness a source of measureless content. In the preface to The Tempest, published in 1892, he