Thursday, April 16, 1891
"... But my idea is, that Shakespeare, Browning, unexpressibly grand as their work has been, are democrats rebellious against democracy--not made for this era, stage, America--answering other conditions, answering them well, but with something of hauteur towards common ways of average men--which is in fact America. I know it is small, carping, unworthy, to offer any word of criticism of a man like Shakespeare, who has done so much towards the richening of literature, of man--who was a luminary of the first order--perhaps the first in the first. And so I grant all that--yield it all. Only protest that these centuries of annotations have not succeeded in making Shakespeare answer to the modern--the democratic modern. And what I say of Shakespeare I always feel about Goethe, too. And I know, moreover, that some of the noblest of us all have stood reactionary on that question of democracy--of man in the average--the vital moving mass."