So, leaving Miranda and Prospero to console us, the greatest dramatist of all time laid down his pen. Many a critic and lover of the poet has seen in the last words of Prospero, spoken when he gives up his magic wand, a reflection of the poet's mind. His life-work, too, was done. Unaided, save by his own genius, he had moved from the obscurity of Warwickshire's by-ways to a place by the side of the Immortals. In all the firmament of poetry there was no star to outshine his. It may be he knew that the years still left to him were likely to be few, and that his heart turned more from the bustle of a great city's ways to the quiet fields and lanes wherein his earliest inspiration had come to him. He had written a few scenes of plays that other men would seem to have designed and completed, but these fragments are of small importance and may be passed over here. Whatever he had given to lend a lustre to the work of his contemporaries would seem to have afforded him little concern. Henceforward his life was to be spent far from the busy centre of theatrical life, though he was compelled to come to town at short intervals in the first two or three years following his retirement, and there must have been ample atonement for the trouble, in the way of association with old friends who still laboured in the metropolis. When the poet passed into voluntary retirement he had but five years to live, but his genius was still ripe. Did he elect deliberately to end his labours before the first touch of weakness could reach them? Had he realised his ambition, even as Prospero, who moves with such supreme dignity through the last play? Was he content to have restored the family fortunes? Was it to do this, to take full rank among the gentlemen of Warwickshire, that he had striven so long? There is no satisfactory answer to these questions. The records are silent as the grave itself, and if the past has proved so silent on all points that relate to the growth and trend of the poet's mind outside the domain of his work, what may we hope from the future? CHAPTER XI BACK AGAIN IN STRATFORD