It may be justifiable to cherish regret for the loss of Shakespeare's
autograph papers and of his familiar correspondence. But the absence
of such documentary material can excite scepticism of the received
tradition only in those 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. 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.
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