Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion.

beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade

Or ever the knightly years were gone, with the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon and you were a Christian Slave. I saw, I took, I cast you by, I bent and broke your pride... And a myriad suns have set and shone, since then upon the grave, Decreed by the King in Babylon, to her that had been his slave. The pride I trampled is now my scathe, for it tramples me again. The old remnant lasts like death for you love, yet you refrain. I break my heart on your hard unfaith, and I break my heart in vain.

[T]hey stretch you on a table. Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anæsthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being.

Into the winter's gray delight, Into the summer's golden dream, Holy and high and impartial, Death, the mother of Life, Mingles all men for ever.

It is the artist's function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal.

The life of Dumas is not only a monument of endeavour and success, it is a sort of labyrinth as well. It abounds in pseudonyms and disguises, in sudden and unexpected appearances and retreats as unexpected and sudden, in scandals and in rumours, in mysteries and traps and ambuscades of every kind.