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332 conversation. That a popular speaker, however uppopularunpopular [sic] and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause. That to mention any other author in the same page with Shakespeare is to insult that other author, however distinguished he may be in the abstract, by reminding society of his relative insignificance. All this is quite true. My argument is, not that Shakespeare does not deserve all that is said and done in his honour, but that he deserves so much more.

He deserves to be read, but who reads him? I read him, and you read him, and probably Mr. Irving reads him, but how many more read him? A few, no doubt, but how many? I do not mean "how many dip into him?" I mean how many read him right through as they read Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, and Carlyle—or as they used to read Byron and Walter Scott, and Cooper and Marryat? Not to have read every novel of Thackeray is to be at a serious social disadvantage. No man with any pretence to a cultivated mind will publicly admit that he is not acquainted with every important poem of Tennyson. But how many Englishmen can lay their hands upon their hearts and say that they have read The Two Gentlemen of Verona from beginning to end? or All's Well that Ends Well? or Richard the Second? or "The First, Second, and Third Parts" of Henry the Sixth? or Julius Cæsar? or Coriolanus? or Troilus and Cressida? or Cymbeline? or Love's Labour Lost? or Timon of Athens? A few,