I wish to speak with respect and gratitude of these confidences. I
welcome them, and have no wish to repress them. But truth does not
permit me to affirm that such as have yet reached me have done more
than enlarge my conception of the scope of human credulity. I look
forward to the day when the postman shall, through the generosity of
some appreciative reader of my biography of Shakespeare, deliver at my
door an autograph of the dramatist of which nothing has been heard
before, or a genuine portrait of contemporary date, the existence of
which has never been suspected. But up to the moment of writing,
despite the good intentions of my correspondents, no experience of the
kind has befallen me.
There is something pathetic in the frequency with which
correspondents, obviously of unblemished character and most generous
instinct, send me almost tearful expressions of regret that I should
have hitherto ignored one particular document, which throws (in their
eyes) a curious gleam on the dramatist's private life. At least six
times a year am I reminded how it is recorded in more than one obscure
eighteenth-century periodical that the dramatist, George Peele, wrote
to his friend Marle or Marlowe, in an extant letter, of a merry
meeting which was held at a place called the "Globe.
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