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."