rt of biography has
ripened into satisfying fulness. A great man's reputation and the
moving incidents of his career never live solely in the printed book
or the literary word. In a great man's lifetime, and for many years
after, his fame and his fortunes live most effectually on living lips.
The talk of surviving kinsmen, fellow-craftsmen, admiring
acquaintances, and sympathetic friends is the treasure-house which
best preserves the personality of the dead hero for those who come
soon after him. When biography is unpractised, no other treasure-house
is available.

The report of such converse moves quickly from mouth to mouth. In its
progress the narration naturally grows fainter, and, when no
biographer lies in wait for it, ultimately perishes altogether. But
oral tradition respecting a great man whose work has fascinated the
imagination of his countrymen comes into circulation early, persists
long, even in the absence of biography, and safeguards substantial
elements of truth through many generations. Although no biographer put
in an appearance, it is seldom that some fragment of oral tradition
respecting a departed hero is not committed to paper by one or other
amateur gossip who comes within earshot of it early in its career. The
casual unsifted record of floating anecdote is not always above
suspicion. As a rule it is embodied in familiar correspondence, or in
diaries, or in commonplace books, where clear and definite language is
rarely met with; but, however disappointingly imperfect and trivial,
however disjointed, however deficient in literary form the registered
jottings of oral tradition may be, it is in them, if they exist at all
with any title to credit, that future ages best realise the fact that
the great man was in plain truth a living entity, and no mere shadow
of a name.

III

When Shakespeare died, on the 23rd of 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
him. Apart from his numerous kinsfolk and neighbours at
Stratford-on-Avon, there was in London a large society of
fellow-authors and fellow-actors with whom he lived in close
communion. Very little correspondence or other intimate memorials,
whether of Shakespeare's professional friends or of his kinsfolk or
country neighbours, survive. Nevertheless some scraps of the talk
about Shakespeare that circulated among his acqu