Then he suddenly appears in another aspect; at the age of thirty-two he is a successful, well-to-do man.  And then his ambition, if he had any, seems to shift its centre, and he appears to be only bent upon restoring the fortunes of his family, and attaining a solid municipal position.  He buys the biggest house in his native place; from the proceeds of his writings, his professional income as an actor, and from his share in the playhouse of which he is part owner, he purchases lands and houses, he engages in lawsuits, he concerns himself with grants of arms.  Still the flood of stupendous literature flows out; he seems to be under a contract to produce plays, for which he receives the magnificent sum of L10 (L100 of our money).  He writes easily and never corrects.  He seems to set no store on his writings, which stream from him like light from the sun.  He adapts, collaborates, and has no idea of what would be called a high vocation.

At forty-seven it all ceases; he writes no more, but lives prosperously in his native town, with occasional visits to London.  At fifty-two his health fails.  He makes business-like arrangements in the event of death, and faces the darkness of the long sleep like any other good citizen.

Who can co-ordinate or reconcile these things?  Who can conceive the likeness of the man, who steps in this light-hearted, simple way on to the very highest platform of literature—­so lofty and unattainable a place he takes without striving, without arrogance, a throne among the thrones where Homer, Virgil, and Dante sit?  And yet his mind is set, not on these things, but on acres and messuages, tithes and investments.  He seems not only devoid of personal vanity, but even of that high and solemn pride which made Keats say, with faltering lips, that he believed he would be among the English poets after his death.

I came through the pleasant water-meadows and entered the streets of the busy town.  Everything, from bank to eating-shop, bears the name of Shakespeare; and one cannot resist the thought that such local and homely renown would have been more to our simple hero’s taste than the laurel and the throne.  I groaned in spirit over the monstrous playhouse, with its pretentious Teutonic air; I walked through the churchyard, vocal with building rooks, and came to the noble church, full of the evidences of wealth and worship and honour.  I do not like to confess the breathless awe with which I drew near to the chancel and gazed on the stone that, nameless, with its rude rhyme, covers the sacred dust.  I cannot say what my thoughts were, but I was lost in a formless, unuttered prayer of true abasement before the venerable relics of the highest achievements of the human spirit.  There beneath my feet slept the dust of the brain that conceived Hamlet and Macbeth, and the hand that had traced the Sonnets, and the eye that had plumbed the depths of life.  That was a solemn moment, and I do not think I ever experienced so deep a thrill of speechless awe.  I could not tear myself away; I could only wonder and desire.