would always shed a golden light on his native place of Stratford and the river Avon which ran beside it. Such was the invariable temper in which literary men gave vent to their grief on learning the death of the 'beloved author,' 'the famous scenicke poet,' 'the admirable dramaticke poet,' 'that famous writer and actor,' 'worthy master William Shakespeare' of Stratford-on-Avon. Χ The oral When Shakespeare died, on the 23rd April 1616, many men and women were alive who had come into personal association with him, and there were many more who had heard of him from those who had spoken with tradition. him. Apart from his numerous kinsfolk, his widow, sister, brother, daughters, nephews, and neighbours at Stratford-onAvon, there were in London a large society of fellow-authors and fellow-actors with whom he lived in close communion. In London, where Shakespeare's work was mainly done, and his fortune and reputation achieved, he lived with none in more intimate social relations than with the leading members of his own prosperous company of actors, which, under the patronage of the king, produced his greatest plays. It is to be borne in mind that to the disinterested admiration for his genius of two fellow-members of Shakespeare's company we chiefly owe the preservation and publication of the greater part of his literary work in the First Folio, that volume which first offered the world a full record of his achievement, and is the greatest of England's literary treasures. Those actor-editors of his dramas, Heming and Condell, acknowledged plainly and sincerely the personal fascination that so worthy a friend and fellow as was our Shakespeare' had exerted on them. All his fellow-workers cherished an affec The cer tainty of our tionate pride in the intimacy. It was they who were the parents of the greater part of the surviving oral tradition concerning Shakespeare-a tradition which combines with the extant documentary evidence to make Shakespeare's biography as unassailable as any narrative known to history. Some links in the chain of Shakespeare's career are still missing, and we must wait for the future to disclose them. But though the clues at present are in some places faint, the trail never altogether eludes the patient knowledge. investigator. The ascertained facts are already numerous enough to define beyond risk of intelligent doubt the direction that Shakespeare's career followed. Its general outline is fully established by a continuous and unimpeachable chain of oral tradition, which survives from the seventeenth century, and by documentary evidence-far more documentary evidence than exists in the case of Shakespeare's great literary contemporaries. How many distinguished Elizabethan and Jacobean authors have shared the fate of John Webster, next to Shakespeare the most eminent tragic dramatist of the era, of whom no positive biographic fact survives? of his manu scripts. It may be justifiable to cherish regret for the loss of Shakespeare's autograph papers, and of his familiar correThe absence spondence. Only five signatures of Shakespeare survive, and no other fragments of his handwriting have been discovered. Other reputed autographs of Shakespeare have been found in books of his time, but none has quite established its authenticity. Yet the absence of autograph material can excite scepticism of the received tradition only in those who are ignorant of Elizabethan literary history-who are ignorant of the fate that invariably befell the original manuscripts and correspondence of Elizabethan and Jacobean poets and dramatists. Save for a few fragments of small literary moment, no play of the era in its writer's autograph escaped early destruction by fire or dustbin. No machinery then ensured, no custom then encouraged, the due preservation of the autographs of men distinguished for poetic genius. The amateur's passion for autograph collecting is of far later date. Provision was made in the public record offices, or in private muniment-rooms of great country mansions, for the protection of the official papers and correspondence of men in public life, and of manuscript memorials affecting the property and domestic history of great county families. But even in the case of men, in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, in official life who, as often happened, devoted their leisure to literature, autographs of their literary compositions have for the most part perished, and there usually only remain in the official depositories remnants of their writing about matters of official routine. Some documents signed by Edmund Spenser, while he was Secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, or holding official positions in the Government of Ireland, survive, but where is the manuscript of Spenser's poems-of his Shepheards Calender, or his great epic of the Faerie Queene? Official papers signed by Sir Walter Ralegh, who filled a large place in English public life of the period, survive, but where is any fragment of the manuscript of his voluminous History of the World? Not all the depositories of official and family papers in England, it is to be admitted, have yet been fully explored, and in some of them a more thorough search than has yet been undertaken may possibly throw new light on Shakespeare's biography or work. Meanwhile, instead of mourning helplessly over the lack of material for a knowledge of Shakespeare's life, it becomes us to estimate aright what we have at our command, to study it closely in the light of the literary history of the epoch, and, while neglecting no opportunity of bettering our information, to recognise frankly the activity of the destroying agencies that have been at work from the outset. Then we shall wonder, not why we know so little, but why we know so much. 'His learning savours not the school-like gloss Of all the worth and first effects of art. And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life BEN JONSON, Poetaster, Act v., Sc. i. [BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Study of foreign influences on Shakespeare's I Art and letters of the supreme kind, we are warned by Goethe, know nothing of the petty restrictions of nationality. Shakespeare, the greatest poet of the world, is claimed to be |