Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[186] the ‘works’ of Shakespeare, and fifteen hundred more under ‘Shakespeareana.’ It is certain that all these special collections are very incomplete, and it is altogether probable that all these estimates are too scanty. If they are not, they soon will be, since all these special literatures are increasing all the time. More than a hundred titles have been added to the Dante list, for instance, during the past year; and the Petrarch quinquecentennial called forth one hundred and twenty-five new works about that poet in Italy alone. If anything is certain, it is that, when the world has once definitely accepted a man as among the elect, his fame and his lead over his contemporaries go on increasing with the passing years. It is possible that the Academie Francaise may yet be chiefly remembered because it rejected Moliere, as the mighty Persian conqueror had a place in fame simply as one who knew not the worth of Firdousi.

‘Literature,’ it has been said, is ‘attar of roses: one distilled drop from a million petals.’ Those who learned their Italian nearly half a century ago will remember that the favorite