poet's immature death, his various employments, and the number of his plays which have come down to us, is it probable that any considerable portion of his writings has perished. editions within a period of not more than That No collected edition of Shakspeare's dramatic works appeared until 1623, seven years after the poet's death. The volume was ushered into the world by two of his former dramatic associates, John The manner of his death is uncertain. His will, still preserved in the Prerogative Office, is dated March 25, 1616. The poet's handwriting, never very good, if we may judge from the few signatures that have been preserved, and fifty years more antiquated than that of Sir Thomas Lucy, is feeble, shaky, and imperfect; very little like what might have been expected from one whose practice in writing must have been considerable, and who had in his time filled many reams of manuscript. His death did not occur until the 23d April following. It would seem, therefore, that his death was far from sudden; and this alone would suffice to invalidate the tradition, circulated forty-five years after, that the poet died of a fever contracted at a merry meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson. His bust in Stratford Church, his portrait by Droeshout prefixed to the first folio edition of his works, and the whole tenor of his life, contradict altogether the supposition that the poet was intemperate. If the opinion of competent judges may be taken, the bust was executed from a cast taken after death. It was certainly colored after life, and until it was painted over by Malone-a greater crime to Shakspeare's memory than Mr. Gaskill's destruction of the famous mulberry tree-it represented the poet exactly as he appeared to his contemporaries. The eyes were a bright hazel, the hair and beard auburn; the doublet was scarlet, covered with a loose black sleeveless gown. As in Droeshout's portrait, the forehead is remarkably high M and broad; in fact, the immense volume of the forehead is its most striking feature. The predominant characteristic of the whole is that of a composed, selfpossessed, resolute, and vigorous Englishman, of a higher intellectual stamp than usual, but not so far removed from the general national type as we should have been inclined to expect from his writings. * "Shakespere, a Critical Biography," by Samuel Neil, p. 59. The following is a list of the 4to and their various editions, before the folio of 1623. The letter M is prefixed to those mentioned by Meres. M 1594. Titus Andronicus, entered at Stationers' 1595. M 1597. M 66 66 M 1598. 66 M M M M? Of the several works of Shakspeareplays and poems-there were prior to 1616 in circulation, in all, no fewer than between sixty and sixty-five editions. Old Some of these reached as many as six 1600. 66 66 Merchant of Venice, 1600 bis. Midsummer Night's Dream, 1600 bis. Much Ado about Nothing, 1600. 1602. Merry Wives of Windsor, 1602, 1619. 1603. Hamlet, 1603, 1604, 1605, 1611. 1605. Lear, 1608 bis. 1609. Pericles, 1609, 1611, 1619. 66 Troilus and Cressida, 1609 bis. 1622. Othello, 1622. Contention of York and Lancaster. plays: Richard III., 1594; Taming of a Shrew, 1594, 1607. Heminge and Henrie Condell, to whom in conjunction with Burbage, the famous actor, Shakspeare had left in his will "265. and 8d. a piece to buy them ringes." But Burbage died on March 16, 1619;t and if, as is not improbable, he had been originally associated with Heminge and Condell in preparing Shakspeare's dramatic works for the press, his death before the appearance of the volume prevented his name from being joined with theirs in their glorious task. Not one word appears in Shakspeare's will as to the disposal of his papers and manuscripts, or of his shares in the theatres, if at the time of his death he possessed any. If Ward's statement be true that Shakespeare during the closing years of his life furnished an *"And to my fellows, John Hemynges, Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell, xxvj.s. viij.d. a piece, to buy them rings.' Burbage, or Burbadge, according to Malone, was one of the principal sharers of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres. In a letter written in 1613 (Harl. MSS. 7002), the actors at the Globe are called Burbadge's Company. In Jonson's "Masque of Christmas," 1616, the year that is of Shakspeare's death, Venus, in the character of a deaf tire-woman, is made to say of Cupid: "I could have had money enough for him, an I would have been tempted and have let him out by the week to the king's players. Master Burbage has been Hemings too; they have need of him."-Shaksp. iii, 230, ed. 1803. about and about with me, and so has old Master Heminge and Condell are said to have been printers as well as actors, but Malone thinks that there is no authority for this statement. Probably it arose from their connection with Shakspeare's printed works. At all events, had they been printers by occupation, it is reasonable to surmise that their names would have been found on the title pages of some of the earlier copies of Shakspeare's plays. All the payments made by the Treasurer of the Chamber in 1613, and subsequently, for plays performed at Court, are "to John Heminge and the rest of his fellows" (Malone, ib. 234). In his will Heminge directs that if a sufficient sum cannot be raised from his ordinary chattels towards the payment of his debts, a moiety of the profits which he has "by lease in the several playhouses of the Globe and Blackfriars" shall be set aside for that purpose. In another legacy he says: "I give and bequeath unto every my fellows and sharers, his Majesty's servants, which shall be living at the time of my decease, the sum of 10s. a piece, to make them rings for remembrance of me." Heminge died in 1630. Henry Condell, whose name appears in the privy seal of James I., 1603, in conjunction with those of Shakspeare, Burbage, and Heminge, died in 1627. Malone thinks that both Burbage and Heminge were natives of Shottery, near Stratford (ib. 233). nually two plays for the stage,* if it be true that the poet's income was considerable, that he made no purchases of any moment after 1605, that he was besides in the very zenith of his fame and the most popular author of his times, it will be difficult to account for two things: how was it, if he sold the copyright of his plays to his fellows of the Globe and Blackfriars, that he was no richer in 1616 than in 1605? Or if he was richer, how did he dispose of his wealth? From the tithes which he had purchased at Stratford he derived an income of 120l. a year; not less than 400/. a year, according to our present computation. He was not careless or extravagant in his habits, had one daughter only, after 1607, and his wife dependent on his exertions. Did he then retain the copyright of his plays, in his own hands, during this later period of his life, intending to publish them himself, like his contemporary Ben Jonson? Or was he as indifferent to money as he is said to have been to literary fame? The former of these hypotheses is set at rest by the various documents produced by Mr. Halliwell and others, all of which go to show that the possession of the most transcendent genius is not incompatible with the virtues of economy, regularity, and despatch. His supposed indifference to literary fame finds no countenance in his writings, still less in the evidence of his contemporaries. Thus we find Chettle apologizing to Shakspeare as one of those who had taken offence at the disparaging remarks of Greene in his "Groatsworth of Wit," to the publication *That Ward's statement was not very far wrong will appear from the following considerations:-Shakspeare wrote in all 37 plays, including "Pericles." Meres mentions 12 plays as existing in 1598. If to these be added "Pericles" and the three parts of "Henry VI.," that would give 16; or 19 to be written in the seventeen years and few months following. From 1597 to 1605, or 1606, seven plays only, including the first sketch of "Hamlet," appear to have been published, five in 1600, one in 1602, and "Hamlet" in 1603. Between "Hamlet" and "Lear" five years elapsed (1602-1607) without any entry of Shakspeare's writings at Stationers' Hall. Had he ceased writing all that time, or ceased to attract publishers? That Shakespeare permitted inaccurate copies of his plays to be circulated in print is one thing, to assume that he must have done so from indif ference to literary distinction is another. More. over, in his case, as in that of many others, literary fame was money, to which he was certainly not indifferent. of which Chettle had been instrumental. Again, Heywood in his "Apology for Actors," published in 1612, alluding to the trick of a publisher named Jaggard, who had brought out a copy of "Venus and Adonis," with two love epistles between Paris and Helen, under the general title, "by William Shakespere," says, in reclaiming his property: "I must necessarily resent a manifest injury done me in that work by [its] taking the two epistles of Paris to Helen and of Helen to Paris, and printing them in the name of another (Shakespere); which may put the world in opinion I might steal them from him; and he to do himself right hath since published them in his own name. But as I must acknowledge my lines not worthy his patronage under whom he hath published them, so the author I know [was] much offended with Mr. Jaggard, that altogether unknown to him presumed to make so bold with his name." Such words are not compatible with Shakspeare's presumed indifference to the fate of his writings. (To be continued.) St. Paul's. WITH NOTICES OF TRAVELLERS TO THAT COUNTRY. THE popular impression is so strong that China was a new discovery in the sixteenth century, that if we were Irish we should be disposed to call this paper, "Visits to China before it was discovered." The idea is, however, equally well conveyed without a bull, if we term it "Notices of Cathay." For to those who have paid any attention to the subject, the mere use of that name will define the period with which we mean to deal, viz., the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Our notices of China as known to the West might indeed go many centuries further back, though not under the name that we have prefixed. We might go back to the Sinim of the Prophet Isaiah if we were bold enough; we might with firmer assurance go back to the Seres and Sinae of classic poets and geographers, which were but two names applied to the same great people as dimly seen from landward on the north, and from seaward on the south; and to the Tzinista of the Alexandrine monk and merchant, Cosmos, in the sixth century, which was but a Grecizing of the Persian appellation Chinistán. But to begin so far back would lead to prolixity; we confine ourselves, then, to Cathay. This name, KHITAI, though its European use be limited properly to the centuries we have specified, is to this day that by which China is known to nearly all the nations which are accustomed to view it from a landward point of view, including the Russians, the Persians, and The name was the nations of Turkestan. A century later came the climax of the power of Chinghiz, the Mongol conqueror of the eastern world. One result of his conquests, and those of his immediate successors, by the depression into which they threw, for a time, Mahomedan arrogance, and, in fact, all the political partitions of Asia, was to open the breadth of that great continent to the travellers, traders, and missionaries of the west. "It is worthy of the grateful remembrance of all Christian people," says one of the ecclesiastical travellers of the next age, "that just when God let loose in the eastern parts of the world those Tartars to slay and to be slain, He sent forth also into the western parts of the world his faithful and blessed servants, Dominic and Francis, to enlighten, instruct, and build up in the faith." And, indeed, whatever we may think on the whole of the world's debt to Dominic (as indirectly, if not directly, the Father of the Inquisition), it is to the brethren of the two orders, but chiefly to the Franciscans, that we owe a large part of the notices of Eastern Asia that those ages have bequeathed. Thus, among the many wanderers dumb to posterity, who found their way to the far court of Karakorum, on the northern verge of the Mongolian Desert, luckily for us there went, also, in 1245, John of Plano Carpini, a native of Umbria, and, a few years later, the Fleming William of Ruysbroek, or De Rubruquis, both of them Franciscan monks of superior intelligence, whose narratives have been preserved. First by these two, after centuries of oblivion, Europe was told of a great and civilized people, dwelling in the extreme east upon the shores of the ocean; and to the land of this people they gave a name now first heard in the west, that of CATHAY. The elder and earlier monk, after several incidental references to the Kitai, returns to speak of them more particularly thus: "The Cathayans are a Pagan people, who have a written character of their own. They have also, it is reported, a New and an Old Testament; they have besides a book of the Lives of the Fathers, and they have religious recluses, and buildings used very much like churches, in which they say their prayers at appointed seasons of their own. They worship the one God, and reverence the one Lord Jesus Christ, and believe in Eternal Life, but are entirely without baptism. They honor and reverence our Scriptures, are affectionately disposed towards Christians, and do many alms-deeds; indeed they seem to be kindly and civilized folk enow. They have no beard; and in their features are very much like the Mongols, but not so broad in the face. They have a peculiar language. Better craftsmen in all the arts practised by mankind are not to be found on the face of the earth. Their country also is very rich in corn, in wine, gold, silver, and in silk, and in all other things that tend to human maintenance." These curious statements about the quasi-Christianity of the Chinese will be found repeated in Oriental rumor again and again, down to the seventeenth century, and are doubtless connected with those singular parodies of the Roman worship and religious orders which are to be found in the Buddhism of Tibet and China, and which led some of the later, as well as the earlier, missionaries of the Roman Church to declare that the evil one had devised these parodies in order to throw ridicule on the Church and obstruct its progress. Indeed, in our day, poor Père Huc, in spite of his adoption of the latter theory, painted those analogies so vividly, that he is said to have found, to his dismay, his charming book on Tibet placed in the Index Prohibitus of Rome ! Rubruquis (1253) gives somewhat more of detail. He shows his acumen by identifying the Cathayans with the ancient Seres; and he is not only the first, but, as far as we know, the only medieval trav eller who had the sagacity to discern (though, of course, imperfectly) the great characteristic of Chinese written language. The following are his chief remarks on the Cathayans :— "Beyond this is Great Cathay, the people of which I believe to have been those anciently called Seres. From them still come the best silk stuff, which the people in that quarter still term seric, and the nation has the name of Seres from a certain city of theirs. I was well assured that in that country there is a town which has walls of silver and battlements of gold ”— a Chinese legend of the ancient capital Singanfu, and which may remind us of Ptolemy's remark that it was not true that the metropolis of the Sinae had walls of brass. The friar goes on: "The people are little fellows who talk much through the nose; and, like most folk in the far east, they have eyes with a very narrow aperture. They are the very best of artists in every kind of craft; and their physicians have an excellent knowledge of the virtues of herbs, and of diagnosis by the pulse" (on which last matter you will find prolix pages on pages in Duhalde). . . . “Their current money consists of pieces of cotton paper, of a palm in length and breadth, on which are printed"-remark that expression-" certain lines in imitation of the seal of the Great Khan Mangu. They do their writing with a hair-pencil, such as painters paint withal, and in what they write a single character embraces several letters, so as to form a word in itself." When Rubruquis in this passage (with the Serica Vestis of the ancients in mind) points out that the people at Karakorum still called silk stuffs by the name of seric, he anticipates the learned etymologies of Klaproth, and refers, doubtless, as the latter does, to the sirkek of the Mongols, their word for silk. In another passage Rubruquis tells us that he had heard for a fact that beyond Cathay there was a certain place with this peculiarity, that whoever entered it never grew any older; but he really could not believe this. Rubruquis had been sent on this mission by St. Louis of France, part of his commission being to ascertain the truth of the rumors spread that Sartac, one of the great Mongol princes, was a Christian. This, according to the traveller, proved entirely unfounded. Indeed he was admonished by one of that Prince's officers,— "Mind what you are about, saying that our master is a Christian; he is no such thing, but a Mongol." Just so we have heard of an unlucky Southron traveller in days gone by, benighted in a village north of the Scotch border, and exclaiming in despair "Was there then no good Christian who would take him in ?" 66 Na, na," was all the reply, "we're all Jardines and Johnstones here!" Other brief notices of Cathay occur in the narrative of the Journey of Hayton, king of the small Cilician territory, which bore the name of Little Armenia, who in 1254-55 visited by invitation the court of Mangu Khan at Karakorum. Among other things King Hayton heard that beyond Cathay there was a country where the women were possessed of reason just like men, whilst the male sex were represented by great shaggy dogs, devoid of reason; a story which had been told also to Plano Carpini, and which Klaproth has found in Chinese books of the period. It is an Arab legend also, in somewhat different form, and probably has its foundation in the exceeding disproportion in personal comeliness between the two NEW SERIES.-VOL. XIV., No. 5. sexes, which is found in many peoples of Mongolian race. Our scheme and space admit only of an allusion to that illustrious Venetian family, whose travels occupy a large portion of the interval between the journey of Rubruquis and the end of the thirteenth century, and who were in fact the first Europeans known actually to have reached Cathay. All other travellers to Cathay are stars of inferior magnitude beside the orb of Marco Polo. There was a time when he was counted among the romancers; but that is long past, and his veracity and justness of observation still shine brighter under every recovery of lost and forgotten knowledge. Fifty years ago Marsden did much in a splendid edition to elucidate the traveller's narrative; but it is no exaggeration to say that the material for the illustration of the story has been more than doubled since that day, scarcely so much from the expansion of modern travel as from the stores of Chinese, Mongol, and Persian history which have been rendered accessible to European readers, or brought directly to bear upon the elucidation of the traveller by the great scholars of France and Germany. Within the last few years Paris has issued a beautiful edition of the book by M. Panthier, which brings forward a vast mass of new matter from the editor's own Chinese studies. It is indeed to be regretted in this work that there is a want of generosity in the recognition of the labors of the editor's predecessors, and towards some of them an acrimony which makes outsiders marvel and exclaim, "Tartære animis cœlestibus iræ ? Wherefore should the language of the Celestial Empire have so bad an effect on the temper of its students ? Just as the three noble Venetians were reaching their native city (i.e., in 1295), the forerunner of a new band of travellers was entering China from the south. This was John of Monte Corvino, a Franciscan monk, who, already nearly fifty years of age, was plunging alone into that great sea of paganism, and of what he deemed little better, Nestorianism (for the Nestorian Christians at this time had flourishing communities in many parts of China), to preach the Gospel according to his understanding of it. After years of up-hill work and solitary labor, as better days began to dawn, others joined him; the Popes woke 34 |