y fire or dustbin. No machinery then ensured, no
custom then encouraged, the due preservation of the autographs of men
distinguished for poetic genius. Provision was made in the public
record offices or in private muniment-rooms 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 of the sixteenth or
seventeenth century in official life who, as often happened, devoted
their leisure to literature, the autographs of their literary
compositions have for the most part perished, and there usually only
remain in the official depositories remnants of their writings about
matters of official routine.

Not all those depositories, 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 be expected to throw new light on Shakespeare's
biography. 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 which have been at work from the
outset. Then we shall wonder, not why we know so little, but why we
know so much.

IV

PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE[14]

[Footnote 14: A paper read at the sixth meeting of the Samuel Pepys
Club, on Thursday, November 30, 1905, and printed in the _Fortnightly
Review_ for January, 1906.]

I

In his capacity of playgoer, as indeed in almost every other capacity,
Pepys presents himself to readers of his naive diary as the
incarnation, or the microcosm, of the average man. No other writer has
pictured with the same lifelike precision and simplicity the average
playgoer's sensations of pleasure or pain. Of the play and its
performers Pepys records exactly what he thinks or feels. He usually
takes a more lively interest in the acting and in the scenic and
musical accessories than in the drama's literary quality. Subtlety is
at any rate absent from his criticism. He is either bored or amused.
The piece is either the best or the worst that he ever witnessed. His
epithets are of the bluntest and are without modulation. Wiser than
more professional dramatic critics, he avoi