She made them for herself on scraps of paper, and rolled them
on her tongue when there seemed no occasion for such eloquence. She
was upheld in these excursions by the certainty that no language could
outdo the splendor of her father's memory, and although her efforts
did not notably further the end of his biography, she was under the
impression of living more in his shade at such times than at others.
No one can escape the power of language, let alone those of English
birth brought up from childhood, as Mrs. Hilbery had been, to disport
themselves now in the Saxon plainness, now in the Latin splendor of
the tongue, and stored with memories, as she was, of old poets
exuberating in an infinity of vocables. Even Katharine was slightly
affected against her better judgment by her mother's enthusiasm. Not
that her judgment could altogether acquiesce in the necessity for a
study of Shakespeare's sonnets as a preliminary to the fifth chapter
of her grandfather's biography. Beginning with a perfectly frivolous
jest, Mrs. Hilbery had evolved a theory that Anne Hathaway had a way,
among other things, of writing Shakespeare's sonnets; the idea, struck
out to enliven a party of professors, who forwarded a number of
privately printed manuals within the next few days for her
instruction, had submerged her in a flood of Elizabethan literature;
she had come half to believe in her joke, which was, she said, at
least as good as other people's facts, and all her fancy for the time
being centered upon Stratford-on-Avon.
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