text:  But let me be privileged to express in name of this meeting our respect and admiration for the best of the living dramatists--one deeply imbued with the spirit of the Elizabethan age--one who has rescued our stage from the reproach which seemed ready to fall upon it--one to whose exuberant poetical fertility and bold originality of thought we are indebted for such beautiful creations as "Virginius" and "William Tell " the "Hunchback" and the "Love Chase "--our valued friend James Sheridan Knowles