{{rh|206|REBECCA.}}
one in which was Shakespeare's Midsummer Night’s Dream, filled with notes on favourite passages: for before poverty had pressed so heavily, it was Rebecca’s delight to write on the margin all she could remember of her father's remarks.
"Ah, this indeed is fame!" exclaimed their visitor, unconsciously soliloquising aloud: "I care not to be bound in scented leather, clasped with the arms of my owner wrought in silver, and to be kept one among many in the ancient library, a thing of show, not of use—a part of the furniture. No; give me the obscure corner and the frequent reading; be mine the few minutes snatched from toil—the one remembered passage which keeps alive the seeds of poetry sown in every heart—the thought that rises remembered in a contemplative hour—the words in which the lover clothes his own love. Ah! the poet hath no true hope, who doth not place it in the many, and in the feeling of the common multitude."
Rebecca now learnt, for the first time, that it was Lee the dramatist who inhabited their dwelling. In a fit of disgust at society, and the excitement produced by the idea of a new work, he had buried himself in entire seclusion, to finish his "Rival Queens."
"I must be by myself when I write," was his frequent observation. "The indifference of my fellow-creatures chills me to the very soul; I feel my own nothingness too severely; I see the selfishness,
