Produced by Charles Franks, Bill Keir
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
This is the wey to al good aventure.—CHAUCER
[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
After the Chandos Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London, whichis attributed to Richard Burbage or John Taylor. In the catalogue of theNational Portrait Gallery the following description is given:
"The Chandos Shakespeare was the property of John Taylor,
the player, by whom or by Richard Burbage it was painted.
The picture was left by the former in his will to Sir
William Davenant. After his death it was bought by
Betterton, the actor, upon whose decease Mr. Keck of the
Temple purchased it for 40 guineas, from whom it was
inherited by Mr. Nicoll of Michenden House, Southgate,
Middlesex, whose only daughter married James, Marquess of
Caernarvon, afterwards Duke of Chandos, father to Ann
Eliza, Duchess of Buckingham."
The above is written on paper attached to the back of the canvas.
Its authenticity, however, has been doubted in some quarters.
Purchased at the Stowe Sale, September 1848, by the Earl of
Ellesmere, and presented by him to the nation, March 1856.
Dimensions: 22 in. by 16-3/4 in.
This reproduction of the portrait was made from a miniature copy on ivoryby Caroline King Phillips.]
The last thing we find in making a book is to know what to putfirst.—Pascal
When an author has finished his history, after months or years of happywork, there comes a dismal hour when he must explain its purpose andapologize for its shortcomings.
The explanation in this case is very simple and goes back to a personalexperience. When the author first studied the history of our literaturethere was put into his hands as a textbook a most dreary catalogue of deadauthors, dead masterpieces, dead criticisms, dead ages; and a boy who knewchiefly that he was alive was supposed to become interested in thisliterary sepulchre or else have it said that there was something hopelessabout him. Later he learned that the great writers of England and Americawere concerned with life alone, as the most familiar, the most mysterious,the most fascinating thing in the world, and that the only valuable orinteresting feature of any work of literature is its vitality.
To introduce these writers not as dead worthies but as companionable menand women, and to present their living subject as a living thing, winsomeas a smile on a human face,—such was the author's purpose in writing thisbook.
The apology is harder to frame, as anyone knows who has attempted to gatherthe writers of a thousand years into a single volume that shall have thethree virtues of brevity, readableness and accuracy. That this record isbrief in view of the immensity of the subject is plainly apparent. That itmay prove pleasantly readable is a hope inspired chiefly by the fact thatit was a pleasure to write it, and that pleasure is co