From the scholars and critics of her own country, indeed, Miss Bacon might have looked for a worthier appreciation, because many of the best of them have higher cultivation and finer and deeper literary sensibilities than all but the very profoundest and brightest of Englishmen.  But they are not a courageous body of men; they dare not think a truth that has an odor of absurdity, lest they should feel themselves bound to speak it out.  If any American ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss Bacon never knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at once republished some of the most brutal vituperations of the English press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman with stolen mud, without even waiting to know whether the ignominy was deserved.  And they never have known it, to this day, nor ever will.

The next intelligence that I had of Miss Bacon was by a letter from the mayor of Stratford-on-Avon.  He was a medical man, and wrote both in his official and professional character, telling me that an American lady, who had recently published what the mayor called a “Shakspeare book,” was afflicted with insanity.  In a lucid interval she had referred to me, as a person who had some knowledge of her family and affairs.  What she may have suffered before her intellect gave way, we had better not try to imagine.  No author had ever hoped so confidently as she; none ever failed more utterly.  A superstitious fancy might suggest that the anathema on Shakspeare’s tombstone had fallen heavily on her head in requital of even the unaccomplished purpose of disturbing the dust beneath, and that the “Old Player” had kept so quietly in his grave, on the night of her vigil, because he foresaw how soon and terribly he would be avenged.  But if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance of such things now, he has surely requited the injustice that she sought to do him—­the high justice that she really did—­by a tenderness of love and pity of which only he could be capable.  What matters it, though she called him by some other name?  He had wrought a greater miracle on her than on all the world besides.  This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a depth in the man whom she decried, which scholars, critics, and learned societies, devoted to the elucidation of his unrivalled scenes, had never imagined to exist there.  She had paid him the loftiest honor that all these ages of renown have been able to accumulate upon his memory.  And when, not many months after the outward failure of her life-long object, she passed into the better world, I know not why we should hesitate to believe that the immortal poet may have met her on the threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly and comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a smile of gentle humor in his eyes at the thought of certain mistaken speculations) for having interpreted him to mankind so well.