[From Books and You, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1940, p. 46:]

Of course, everyone must read the great tragedies of Shakespeare. He is not only the greatest poet that ever lived but the glory of our race. But knowing, as I do, these plays pretty well, I wish that someone with taste, knowledge and discretion could be found who would make an anthology of Shakespeare's plays and poems, putting in not only the famous passages with which we should all be familiar but also fragments, single lines even; so that I might have in a convenient volume a book to which I could always turn when I wanted the cream of all poetry.*

*Since I wrote these lines George Rylands has produced an anthology under the title The Ages of Man which comes as near fulifilling the wish I have here expressed as, I suppose, anyone can expect. It is a welcome gift to a troubled world.