Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/458

444 that befitted a king until he taught them. Yet, how little personal history he made for himself! Not half as many footprints of his personality can be found as his father's made at Stratford. This is a mystery that can have but one reasonable explanation. It is of no use to say that his social nature was cold or cramped; that he had not a rather large circle of personal friends, whom he first met and made in London, and who came from different parts of the country. Doubtless he wrote to these and others letters by the score. Where are they? Where is one of them? We have volumes of letters centuries older than the first le wrote brought out quite recently; but not a scrap of his handwriting turns up to reward the searching hunt of his relic-explorers. It is said that only one letter written to him has been preserved, and this is a begging one from a Richard Quincy, who wants to borrow a sum of money of the poet to keep his head above water in London. I cannot conceive to what else this dense obscurity enveloping his personal entity can be ascribed than to the fact, that the morning twilight of his fame did not dawn upon the world until he had lain in his grave a full century. In this long interval all the letters he wrote and received doubtless shared the fate of Cæsar's clay. The greengrocers and haberdashers of that period probably bought and used them for making up their parcels of butter