The time is wellnigh come now for me to consecrate in this book my good will if not good work to the threefold and thrice happy memory of the three who have written of Shakespeare as never man wrote, nor ever man may write again; to the everlasting praise and honour and glory of Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Walter Savage Landor; “wishing,” I hardly dare to say, “what I write may be read by their light.”  The play of plays, which is Cymbeline, remains alone to receive the last salute of all my love.

I think, as far as I can tell, I may say I have always loved this one beyond all other children of Shakespeare.  The too literal egoism of this profession will not be attributed by any candid or even commonly honest reader to the violence of vanity so much more than comical as to make me suppose that such a record or assurance could in itself be matter of interest to any man:  but simply to the real and simple reason, that I wish to show cause for my choice of this work to wind up with, beyond the mere chance of its position at the close of the chaotically inconsequent catalogue of contents affixed to the first edition.  In this casualty—­for no good thing can reasonably be ascribed to design on the part of the first editors—­there would seem to be something more than usual of what we may call, if it so please us, a happy providence.  It is certain that no studious arrangement could possibly have brought the book to a happier end.  Here is depth enough with height enough of tragic beauty and passion, terror and love and pity, to approve the presence of the most tragic Master’s hand; subtlety enough of sweet and bitter truth to attest the passage of the mightiest and wisest scholar or teacher in the school of the human spirit; beauty with delight enough and glory of life and grace of nature to proclaim the advent of the one omnipotent Maker among all who bear that name.  Here above all is the most heavenly triad of human figures that ever even Shakespeare brought together; a diviner three, as it were a living god-garland of the noblest earth-born brothers and loveworthiest heaven-born sister, than the very givers of all grace and happiness to their Grecian worshippers of old time over long before.  The passion of Posthumus is noble, and potent the poison of Iachimo; Cymbeline has enough for Shakespeare’s present purpose of “the king-becoming graces”; but we think first and last of her who was “truest speaker” and those who “called her brother, when she was but their sister; she them brothers, when they were so indeed.”  The very crown and flower of all her father’s daughters,—­I do not speak here of her human father, but her divine—­the woman above all Shakespeare’s women is Imogen.  As in Cleopatra we found the incarnate sex, the woman everlasting, so in Imogen we find half glorified already the immortal godhead of womanhood.  I would fain have some honey in my words at parting—­with Shakespeare never, but for ever with these notes on Shakespeare; and I am therefore something more than fain to close my book upon the name of the woman best beloved in all the world of song and all the tide of time; upon the name of Shakespeare’s Imogen.