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master when he was six years old, he might have he continued in this situation whilst he remained in continued in a state of instruction for seven or even his single state, has not been told to us, and cannot for eight years; a term sufficiently long for any therefore at this period he known. But in the abDoy, not an absolute blockhead, to acquire some- sence of information, conjecture will be busy; and thing more than the mere elements of the classical will soon cover the bare desert with unprofitable languages. We are too ignorant, however, of dates vegetation. Whilst Malone surmises that the young in these instances to speak with any confidence on Poet passed the interval, till his marriage, or a the subject; and we can only assert that seven or large portion of it, in the office of an attorney, eight of the fourteen years, which intervened be- Aubrey stations him during the same term at the tween the birth of our Poet in 1564 and the known head of a country school. But the surmises of period of his father's diminished fortune in 1578, Malone are not universally happy; and to the might very properly have been given to the advan-assertions of Aubrey* I am not disposed to attach tages of the free-school. But now the important more credit than was attached to them by Anthony question is to be asked-What were the attainments Wood, who knew the old gossip and was compe of our young Shakspeare at this seat of youthful tent to appreciate his character. It is more proba instruction? Did he return to his father's house in ble that the necessity, which brought young Shak a state of utter ignorance of classic literature? or speare from his school, retained him with his was he as far advanced in his school-studies as father's occupation at home, till the acquisition of a boys of his age (which I take to be thirteen or four-wife made it convenient for him to remove to a teen) usually are in the common progress of our separate habitation. It is reasonable to conclude public and more reputable schools? That his scho- that a mind like his, ardent, excursive, and "all lastic attainments did not rise to the point of learn-compact of imagination," would not be satisfied ing, seems to have been the general opinion of his with entire mactivity; but would obtain knowledge contemporaries; and to this opinion I am willing where it could, if not from the stores of the anto assent. But I cannot persuade myself that he cients, from those at least which were supplied to was entirely unacquainted with the classic tongues; him by the writers of his own country. or that, as Farmer and his followers labour to con- In 1582, before he had completed his eighteenth vince us, he could receive the instructions, even for year, he married Anne Hathaway, the daughter, as three or four years, of a school of any character, Rowe informs us, of a substantial yeoman in the and could then depart without any knowledge be-neighbourhood of Stratford. We are unacquainted yond that of the Latin accidence. The most ac-with the precise period of their marriage, and with complished scholar may read with pleasure the the church in which it was solemnized, for in the poetic versions of the classic poets; and the less register of Stratford there is no record of the event; advanced proficient may consult bis indolence by and we are made certain of the year, in which it applying to the page of a translation of a prose occurred, only by the baptism of Susanna, the first lassic, when accuracy of quotation may not be produce of the union, on the 26th of May, 1583. required and on evidences of this nature is sup- As young Shakspeare neither increased his fortune ported the charge which has been brought, and by this match, though he probably received some which is now generally admitted, against our im- money with his wife, nor raised himself by it in the mortal bard, of more than school-boy ignorance. community, we may conclude that he was induced He might, indeed, from necessity apply to North to it by inclination, and the impulse of love. But for the interpretation of Plutarch; but he read the youthful poet's dream of happiness does not Golding's Ovid only, as I am satisfied, for the en- seem to have been realized by the result. The tertainment of its English poetry. Ben Jonson, bride was eight years older than the bridegroom; who must have been intimately conversant with his and whatever charms she might possess to fascinate friend's classic acquisitions, tells us expressly that, the eyes of her boy-lover, she probably was defi"He had small Latin and less Greek." But, cient in those powers which are requisite to impose according to the usual plan of instruction in our a durable fetter on the heart, and to hold "in sweet schools, he must have traversed a considerable ex- captivity" a mind of the very highest order. No terft of the language of Rome, before he could charge is intimated against the lady: but she is left touch even the confines of that of Greece. He in Stratford by her husband during his long resi must in short have read Ovid's Metamorphoses, dence in the metropolis; and on his death, she is and a part at least of Virgil, before he could open found to be only slightly, and, as it were, casually the grammar of the more ancient, and copious, and remembered in his will. Her second pregnancy, complex dialect. This I conceive to be a fair state- which was productive of twins, (Hamnet and Jument of the case in the question respecting Shak-dith, baptized on the 2d of February, 1584-5,) terspeare's learning. Beyond controversy he was not minated her pride as a mother; and we know noa scholar; but he had not profited so little by the thing more respecting her than that, surviving her hours, which he had passed in school, as not to be illustrious consort by rather more than seven years, able to understand the more easy Roman authors she was buried on the 8th of August, 1623, being, without the assistance of a translation. If he him- as we are told by the inscription on her tomb, of self had been asked, on the subject, he might have the age of sixty-seven. Respecting the habits of parodied his own Falstaff and have answered, "In- life, or the occupation of our young Poet by which deed I am not a Scaliger or a Budæus, but yet no he obtained his subsistence, or even the place of his blockhead, friend." I believe also that he was not residence, subsequently to his marriage, not a floatwholly unacquainted with the popular languages of ing syllable has been wafted to us by tradition for France and Italy. He had abundant leisure to ac- the gratification of our curiosity; and the history quire them; and the activity and the curiosity of of this great man is a perfect blank till the occur his mind were sufficiently strong to urge him to rence of an event, which drove him from his native their acquisition. But to discuss this much agita- town, and gave his wonderful intellect to break out ted question would lead me beyond the limits which in its full lustre on the world. From the frequent are prescribed to me; and, contenting myself with allusions in his writings to the elegant sport of faldeclaring that, in my opinion, both parties are conry, it has been suggested that this, possibly, wrong, both they who contend for our Poet's learn- might be one of his favourite amusements: and no ing, and they who place his illiteracy on a level thing can be more probable, from the active season with that of John Taylor, the celebrated waterpoet, I must resume my humble and most deficient What credit can be due to this Mr. Aubrey, who narrative. The classical studies of William Shak-picked up information on the highway and scattered it speare, whatever progress he may or may not have every where as authentic? who whipped Milton at Cam made in them, were now suspended; and he was making our young Shakspeare a butcher's boy, could bridge in violation of the university statutes; and who, replaced in his father's house, when he had attained embrue his hands in the blood of calves, and represent his thirteenth or fourteenth year, to assist with his him as exulting in poetry over the convulsions of the band in the maintenance of the family. Whether dying animals?

of his life, and his fixed habitation in the country,
than his strong and eager passion for all the plea-
sures of the field. As a sportsman, in his rank of
life, he would naturally become a poacher; and
then it is highly probable that he would fall into the
acquaintance of poachers; and, associating with
them in his idler hours, would occasionally be one
of their fellow-marauders on the manors of their
rich neighbours. In one of these licentious excur-
sions on the grounds of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charle-
cote, in the immediate vicinity of Stratford, for the
purpose, as it is said, of stealing his deer, our
young bard was detected; and, having farther irri-
tated the knight by affixing a satirical ballad on him
to the gates of Charlecote, he was compelled to fly
before the enmity of his powerful adversary, and to
seek an asylum in the capital. Malone, who is
prone to doubt, wishes to question the truth of this
whole narrative, and to ascribe the flight of young
Shakspeare from his native country to the embar-
rassment of his circumstances, and the persecution
of his creditors. But the story of the deer-steal-
ing rests upon the uniform tradition of Stratford,
and is confirmed by the character of Sir T. Lucy,
who is known to have been a rigid preserver of his
game, by the enmity displayed against his memory
by Shakspeare in his succeeding life; and by a
part of the offensive balladf itself, preserved by a
Mr. Jones of Tarbick, a village near to Stratford,
who obtained it from those who must have been
uainted with the fact, and who could not be
biased by any interest or passion to falsify or mis-
state it. Besides the objector, in this instance,
seems not to be aware that it was easier to escape
from the resentment of an offended proprietor of
game, than from the avarice of a creditor: that
whilst the former might be satisfied with the re-
moval of the delinquent to a situation where he
could no longer infest his parks or his warrens, the
latter would pursue his debtor wherever bailiffs
could find and writs could attach him. On every
account, therefore, I believe the tradition, recorded
by Rowe, that our Poet retired from Stratford before
the exasperated power of Sir T. Lucy, and found a
refuge in London, not possibly beyond the reach of
the arm,
but beyond the hostile purposes of his pro-
vincial antagonist.

fant offspring. The world was spread before him, like a dark ocean, m which no fortunate isle could be seen to glitter amid the gloomy and sullen tide. But he was blessed with youth and health; his conscience was unwounded, for the adventure for which he suffered, was regarded, in the estimation of his times, as a mere boy's frolick, of not greater guilt than the robbing of an orchard; and his mind, rich beyond example in the gold of heaven, could throw lustre over the black waste before him, and could people it with a beautiful creation of her own. We may imagine him, then, departing from his home, not indeed like the great Roman captive as he is described by the poet

Fertur pudicæ conjugis osculum,
Parvosque natos, ut capitis minor,
Ab se removisse, et virilem

Torvus humi posuisse, vultum, &c.
but touched with some feelings of natural sorrow,
yet with an unfaltering step, and with hope vigour.
despair; and if he indulged in sanguine expecta-
ous at his heart. It was impossible that he should
tion, the event proved him not to be a visionary,
In the course of a few years, the exile of Stratford
became the associate of wits, the friend of nobles,
the favourite of monarchs; and in a period which
still left him not in sight of old age, he returned to
his birth-place in affluence, with honour, and with
the plaudits of the judicious and the noble resound-
ing in his ears.

stage; to which his access, as it appears, was easy. His immediate refuge in the metropolis was the Stratford was fond of theatrical representations, which it accommodated with its town or guildhall and had frequently been visited by companies of players when our Poet was of an age, not only to enjoy their performances, but to form an acquain tance with their members. Thomas Greene, who sidered by some writers as a kinsman of our auwas one of their distinguished actors, has been conthor's; and though he, possibly, may have been confounded by them with another Thomas Greene, with the Shakspeares, he was certainly a fellow a barrister, who was unquestionably connected townsman of our fugitive bard's; whilst Heminge question, belonged either to Stratford or to its imand Burbage, two of the leaders of the company in mediate neighbourhood. With the door of the theatre thus open to him, and under the impulse of his own natural bias, (for however in after life he sional actor, it must be concluded that he now felt may have lamented his degradation as a profesa strong attachment to the stage,) it is not wonderful that young Shakspeare should solicit this asylum in his distress; or that he should be kindly received by men who knew him, and some of whom were connected, if not with his family, at least with At this agitating crisis of his life, the situation of himself, was the Earl of Leicester's or the Queen's; his native town. The company, to which he united young Shakspeare was certainly, in its obvious which had obtained the royal license in 1574. The aspect, severe and even terrific. Without friends place of its performances, when our Poet became to protect or assist him, he was driven, under the enrolled among its members, was the Globe on the frown of exasperated power, from his profession;. Bankside; and its managers subsequently purfrom his native fields; from the companions of his chased the theatre of Blackfriars, (the oldest theachildhood and his youth; from his wife and his in-tre in London,) which they had previously rented

The time of this eventful flight of the great bard of England cannot now be accurately determined: but we may somewhat confidently place it between the years 1585 and 1588; for in the former of these we may conclude him to have been present with his family at the baptism of his twins, Hamnet and Judith; and than the latter of them we cannot well assign a later date for his arrival in London, since we know that before 1592 he had not only written two long poems, the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, but had acquired no small degree of celebrity as an actor and as a dramatic writer.

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for some years; and at these two theatres, the first of which was open in the centre for summer representations, and the last covered for those of winter, were acted all the dramatic productions of Shakspeare. That he was at first received into the company in a very subordinate situation, may be regarded not merely as probable, but as certain: that he ever carried a link to light the frequenters of the theatre, or ever held their horses, must be rejected as an absurd tale, fabricated, no doubt, by the lovers of the marvellous, who were solicitous to obtain a contrast in the humility of his first to the pride of his subsequent fortunes. The mean incompatible with his circumstances, even in their and servile occupation, thus assigned to nim, was present afflicted state: and his relations and connee

;

it assigns to Pope, Hanmer, and Warburton, those and was content to lose it!" Shakspeare lost the victims to the rage of the minute critics, their due world! He won it in an age of intellectual giants proportion of praise: it is honourably just, in short, the Anakims of mind were then in the land to all, who come within the scope of its observa- and in what succeeding period has he lost it? But, tions, with the exception of the editor's great au- not to take advantage of an idle frolic of the edithor alone. To him also the editor gives abundant tor's imagination, can the things be which he aspraise; but against it he arrays such a frightful serts? Can the author, whom he thus degrades, host of censure as to command the field; and to be the man, whom the greater Jonson, of James's leave us to wonder at our admiration of an object reign, hails as, "The pride, the joy, the wonder so little worthy of it, though he has been followed of the age!" No! it is impossible! and if we by the admiration of more than two entire centuries. come to a close examination of what our preface But Johnson was of a detracting and derogating writer has here alleged against his author, of spirit. He looked at mediocrity with kindness: which I have transcribed only a part, we shall but of proud superiority he was impatient; and he find that one half of it is false, and one, some always seemed pleased to bring down the man of thing very like nonsense, disguised in a garb of tin the ethereal soul to the mortal of mere clay. His sel embroidery, and covered, as it moves statelily maxim seems evidently to have been that, which along, with a cloud of words :was recommended by the Roman poet to his countrymen,

"Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos"

Infert se septus nebula, mirabile dictu,

Per medios, miscetque viris neque cernitur ulli To discover the falsity or the inanity of the ideas, In the pre-eminence of intellect, when it was imme- which strut in our editor's sentences against the diately in his view, there was something which ex- fame of his author, we have only to strip them of cited his spleen; and he exulted in its abasement. the diction which envelopes them; and then, with In his page, "Shakspeare, in his comic scenes, is a Shakspeare in our hands, to confront them, in seldom successful when he engages his characters their nakedness, with the truth as it is manifested in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sar- in his page. But we have deviated from our casm: their jests are commonly gross, and their straight path to regard our editor as a critic in his pleasantry licentious. In tragedy, his performance preface, when we ought, perhaps, to consider him seems to be constantly worse as his labour is more. only in his notes, as a commentator to explain the The effusions of passion, which exigence forces out, obscurities; or, as an experimentalist to assay are, for the most part, striking and energetic: but the errors of his author's text. As an unfolder of whenever he solicits his invention or strains his intricate and perplexed passages, Johnson must faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, be allowed to excel. His explanations are always meanness, tediousness, and obscurity! In narra- perspicuous; and his proffered amendments of a tion he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, corrupt text are sometimes successful. But the and a wearisome train of circumlocution, &c. &c. expectations of the world had been too highly His declamations or set speeches are commonly raised to be satisfied with his performance; and cold and weak, for his power was the power of it was only to the most exceptionable part of it, Nature! when he endeavoured, like other tragic the mighty preface, that they gave their unmingled writers, to catch opportunities of amplification; applause. In the year following the publication of and, instead of inquiring what the occasion demand-Johnson's edition, in 1766, George Steevens made ed, to show how much his stores of knowledge his first appearance as a commentator on Shakcould supply, he seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his reader ?"" "But the admirers of this great poet have never less reason to indulge their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetic without some idle conceit or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner moves than he counteracts himself; and terror and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted with sudden frigidity!" The egregious editor and critic then proceeds to confound his author with his last and most serious charge, that of an irreclaimable attachment to the offence of verbal conceit. This charge the editor illustrates and enforces, to excite our attention and to make an irresistible assault on our assent, with a variety of figurative and magnificent allusion. First, "a quibble is to Shakspeare, what luminous vapours (a Will o' the wisp) are to travellers: he follows it at all adventures: it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to ingulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible," &c. It then becomes a partridge or a pheasant; for "whatever be the dignity or the profundity of his disquisition, &c. &c. let but a quibble spring up before him and he leaves his work unfinished." It next is the golden apple of Atalanta:-"A quibble is to Shakspeare the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight that he was content to purchase it at the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth;" and, lastly, the meteor, the bird of game, and the golden apple are converted into the renowned queen of Egypt: for "a quibble is to him (Shakspeare) the fatal Cleopatra, for which he lost the worid,

speare; and he showed himself to be deeply conversant with that antiquarian reading, of which his predecessor had been too ignorant. In 1768, an edition of Shakspeare was given to the public by Capell; a man fondly attached to his author, but much too weak for the weighty task which he undertook. He had devoted a large portion of his life to the collection of his materials: he was an industrious collator, and all the merit, which he possesses, must be derived from the extent and the fidelity of his collations. In 1773 was pub lished an edition of our dramatist by the associated labours of Johnson and Steevens; and this edition, in which were united the native powers of the former, with the activity, the sagacity, and the antiquarian learning of the latter, still forms the standard edition for the publishers of our Poet. In 1790 Malone entered the lists against them as a competitor for the editorial palm. After this publication, Malone seems to have devoted the remaining years of his life to the studies requisite for the illustration of his author; and at his death he bequeathed the voluminous papers, which he had prepared, to his and my friend, James Boswell, the younger son of the biographer of John son; and by him these papers were published in twenty octavo volumes, just before the close of his own valuable life. That the fund of Shakspearian information has been enlarged by this publication, cannot reasonably be doubted that the text of Shakspeare has been injured by it, may confidently be asserted. As my opinion of Malone, as an annotator on Shakspeare, has been already expressed, it would be superfluous to repeat it. His stores of antiquarian knowledge were at least equal to those of Steevens: but he was not equally endowed by Nature with that popular commentator: Malone's intellect was unquestionably of a subordinate class. He could collect and

and their recurrence in cases were their aid seems to be unnecessary. Mr. Singer and I may occasionally differ in our opinions respecting the text, which he has adopted: but, in these instances of our dissent, it is fully as probable that I may be wrong as he. I feel, in short, confident, on the whole, that Mr. Singer is now advancing, not to claim, (for to claim is inconsistent with his modesty,) but to obtain a high place among the editors of Shakspeare; and to have his name enrolled with the names of those who have been the chief benefactors of the reader of our transcendent Poet.

We have now seen, from the first editorial attempt of Rowe, a whole century excited by the greatness of one man, and sending forth its most ambitious spirits, from the man of genius down to the literary mechanic, to tend on him as the vassals of his royalty, and to illustrate his magnifi cence to the world. Has this excitement had an adequate cause? or has it been only the frenzy of the times, or a sort of meteorous exhalation from an idle and over-exuberant soil? Let us examine our great poet, and dramatist, with the eye of impartial criticism; and then let the result of our examination form the reply to these interrogatories of doubt.

amass; but he could not combine and arrange. Like a weak soldier under heavy armour, he is oppressed by his means of safety and triumph. He sinks beneath his knowledge, and cannot profitably use it. The weakness of his judgment deprived the result of his industry of its proper effect. He acts on a right principle of criticism: but, ignorant of its right application, he employs it for the purposes of error. He was not, in short, formed of the costly materials of a critic; and no abour, against the inhibition of Nature, could fashion him into a critic. His page is pregnant with information: but it is thrown into so many involutions and tangles, that it is lighter labour to work it out of the original quarry than to select it amid the confusion in which it is thus brought to your hand. If any copy of indisputable authority had been in existence, Malone would have produced a fac-simile of it, and would thus, indeed, have been an admirable editor of his author, for not a preposition, a copulative, a particle, a comma to be found in his original, would have been out of its place in his transcript. But no such authentic copy of Shakspeare could be discovered; and something more than diligence and accuracy was required in his editor and to nothing more than diligence and accuracy could Malone's very humble and circum- Shakspeare took his stories from any quarter, scribed abilities aspire. Attaching, therefore, fic- whence they were offered to him; from Italian titious authority to some of the earlier copies, he novels; from histories; from old story-books; followed them with conscientious precision; and, from old plays; and even from old ballads. In one disclaiming all emendatory criticism, he rejoiced in instance, and in one alone, no prototype has been his fidelity to the errors of the first careless or illi- found for his fiction; and the whole of "The Tem terate transcriber. He closed the long file of the pest," from its first moving point to the plenieditors of Shakspeare. But although no formal tude of its existence, must be admitted to be the editor or commentator has hitherto appeared to offspring of his wonderful imagination.* But supply the place left vacant by Malone, yet does whence soever he drew the first suggestion of his the importance of our bard continue to excite the story, or whatever might be its original substance, man of talents to write in his cause, and to refresh he soon converts it into an image of ivory and the wreath of fame, which has hung for two centu- gold, like that of the Minerva of Phidias; and then, ries on his tomb. On this occasion I must adduce beyond the efficacy of the sculptor's art, he breathes the name of Skottowe, a gentleman who has recently into it the breath of life. This, indeed, is spoken gratified the public with a life of Shakspeare, invol- only of his tragedies and comedies: for his histories, ving a variety of matter respecting him, in a style as they were first called, or historical dramas, are eminent for its compression and its neatness. To transcripts from the page of Hall or Hollingshead; Mr. Skottowe I must acknowledge my especial and, in some instances, are his workings on old obligations, for not infrequently relieving me from plays, and belong to him no otherwise than as he the prolixities and the perplexities of Malone; and imparted to them the powerful delineation of chasometimes for giving to me information in a com-racter, or enriched them with some exquisite scenes. pendious and lucid form, like a jewel set in the rich simplicity of gold.

To

These pieces, however, which affect not the com bination of a fable; but, wrought upon the page of When I speak of Malone as the last of the editors the chronicler or of the elder dramatist, follow the of Shakspeare, I speak, of course, with reference current of events, as it flows on in historic succesto the time at which I am writing, when no later sion, must be made the first subjects of our reeditor has shown himself to the world. But when marks; and we will then pass to those dramas, I am placed before the awful tribunal of the Public, which are more properly and strictly his own. a new Editor of our great dramatist will stand by these historical plays, then, whatever may be their my side who, whilst I can be only a suppliant for original materials, the power of the Poet has compardon, may justly be a candidate for praise. With municated irresistible attraction; not, as Samuel Mr. SINGER, the editor in question, I am personally Johnson would wish us to believe, "by being not unacquainted; and till a period, long subsequent to long soft or pathetic without some idle conceit or my completion of the little task which I had under-contemptible equivocation:" not "by checking taken, I had not seen a line of his Shakspearian and blasting terror and pity, as they are rising in illustrations. But, deeming it right to obtain some the mind, with sudden frigidity," but by the strongknowledge of the gentleman, who was bound on est exertions of the highest poetry; and by comthe same voyage of adventure, in the same vessel manding, with the royalty of genius, every avenue with myself, I have since read the far greater part to the human heart. For the truth of what we of his commentary on my author; and it would be assert, we will make our appeal to the frantic and unjust in me not to say, that I have found much in it soul-piercing lamentations of Constance in "King to applaud, and very little to censure. Mr. Singer's John;" to the scene between that monarch and antiquarian learning is accurate and extensive: his Hubert; and between Hubert and young Arthur; critical sagacity is considerable; and his judgment to the subsequent scene between Hubert and his generally approves itself to be correct. He enters murderous sovereign, when the effects of the reon the field with the strength of a giant; but with ported death of Arthur on the populace are de the diffidence and the humility of a child. We scribed, and the murderer quarrels with his agent. sometimes wish, indeed, that his humility had been to the scene, finally, in which the king dies, and less: for he is apt to defer to inferior men, and to which concludes the play. be satisfied with following when he is privileged For the evidence of the power of our great Poet to lead. His explanations of his author are fre- we might appeal also to many scenes and descrip quently happy; and sometimes they illustrate a tions even in "Richard II.;" though of all h passage, which had been left in unregarded dark-historical dramas this, perhaps, is the least instir t ness by the commentators who had preceded him.

The sole fault of these explanatory notes (if such *This, perhaps, may be affirmed also of "A Mid indeed can be deemed a fault) is their redundancy; summer Night's Dream"

acknowledging, as it is supposed, the compliment | rell, a clergyman, into whose worse than Gothie paid to him in the noble scenes of Macbeth; and hands New Place had most unfortunately fallen. scarcely had the crown of England fallen upon his As we are not told the precise time, when Shakhead, when he granted his royal patent to our Poet speare retired from the stage and the metropolis to and his company of the Globe; and thus raised enjoy the tranquillity of life in his native town, we them from being the Lord Chamberlain's servants cannot pretend to determine it. As he is said, to be the servants of the King. The patent is dated however, to have passed some years in his estab on the 19th of May, 1603, and the name of William lishment at New Place, we may conclude that his Shakspeare stands second on the list of the patentees. removal took place either in 1612 or in 1613, when As the demise of Elizabeth had occurred on the he was yet in the vigour of life, being not more 24th of the preceding March, this early attention of than forty-eight or forty-nine years old. He had James to the company of the Globe may be regard- ceased, as it is probable, to tread the stage as an ed as highly complimentary to Shakspeare's thea-actor at an earlier period; for in the list of actors, tre, and as strongly demonstrative of the new sov-prefixed to the Volpone of B. Jonson, performed at ereign's partiality for the drama. But James' the Globe theatre, and published in 1605, the name patronage of our Poet was not in any other way of William Shakspeare is not to be found. However beneficial to his fortunes. If Elizabeth were too versed he might be in the science of acting, (and parsimonious for an effective patron, by his profu- that he was versed in it we are assured by his dision on his pleasures and his favourites, James soon rections to the players in Hamlet,) and, however became too needy to possess the means of bounty well he might acquit himself in some of the suborfor the reward of talents and of learning. Honour, dinate characters of the drama, it does not appear in short, was all that Shakspeare gained by the fa- that he ever rose to the higher honours of his provour of two successive sovereigns, each of them fession. But if they were above his attainment, versed in literature, each of them fond of the dra- they seem not to have been the objects of his amma, and each of them capable of appreciating the bition; for by one of his sonnets* we find that he transcendency of his genius. lamented the fortune which had devoted him to the stage, and that he considered himself as degraded by such a public exhibition. The time was not yet come when actors were to be the companions of princes: when their lives, as of illustrious men, were to be written; and when statues were to be erected to them by public contribution!

It would be especially gratifying to us to exhibit to our readers some portion at least of the personal history of this illustrious man during his long residence in the capital;-to announce the names and characters of his associates, a few of which only we can obtain from Fuller; to delineate his habits of life; to record his convivial wit; to com- The amount of the fortune, on which Shakspeare memorate the books which he read; and to number retired from the busy world, has been the subject his compositions as they dropped in succession of some discussion. By Gildon, who forbears to from his pen. But no power of this nature is in-state his authority, this fortune is valued at 300l. a dulged to us. All that active and efficient portion year; and by Malone, who, calculating our Poet's of his mortal existence, which constituted conside-real property from authentic documents, assigns a rably more than a third part of it, is an unknown random value to his personal, it is reduced to 200L region, not to be penetrated by our most zealous Of these two valuations of Shakspeare's property, and intelligent researches. It may be regarded by we conceive that Gildon's approaches the more us as a kind of central Africa, which our reason nearly to the truth: for if to Malone's conjectural assures us to be glowing with fertility and alive with estimate of the personal property, of which he pro population; but which is abandoned in our maps, fesses to be wholly ignorant, be added the thousand from the ignorance of our geographers, to the death pounds, given by Southampton, (an act of munifiof barrenness, and the silence of sandy desolation. cence of which we entertain not a doubt,) the preBy the Stratford register we can ascertain that his cise total, as money then bore an interest of 101. only son, Hamnet, was buried, in the twelfth year per cent., of the three hundred pounds a year will of his age, on the 11th of August, 1596; and that, be made up. On the smallest of these incomes, after an interval of nearly eleven years, his eldest however, when money was at least five times its daughter, Susanna, was married to John Hall, present value, might our Poet possess the comforts a physician, on the 5th of June, 1607. With the ex- and the liberalities of life and in the society of ception of two or three purchases made by him at his family, and of the neighbouring gentry, conciliaStratford, one of them being that of New Place, ted by the amiableness of his manners and the which he repaired and ornamented for his future re-pleasantness of his conversation, he seems to have sidence, the two entries which we have now ex-passed his few remaining days in the enjoyment of tracted from the register, are positively all that we tranquillity and respect. So exquisite, indeed, apcan relate with confidence of our great poet and his pears to have been his relish of the quiet, which family, during the long term of his connection with was his portion within the walls of New Place, that the theatre and the metropolis. We may fairly it induced a complete oblivion of all that had enconclude, indeed, that he was present at each of the gaged his attention, and had aggrandized his name domestic events, recorded by the register: that he in the preceding scenes of his life. Without any attended his son to the grave, and his daughter to regard to his literary fame, either present or to the altar. We may believe also, from its great come, he saw with perfect unconcern some of his probability, even to the testimony of Aubrey, that immortal works brought, mutilated and deformed, he paid an annual visit to his native town; whence in surreptitious copies, before the world; and others his family were never removed, and which he seems of them, with an equal indifference to their fate, always to have contemplated as the resting place he permitted to remain in their unrevised or interof his declining age. He probably had nothing more polated MSS. in the hands of the theatric prompthan a lodging in London, and this he might occa-ter. There is not, probably, in the whole compass sionally change: but in 1596 he is said to have of literary history, such another instance of a proud lived somewhere near to the Bear-Garden, in South-superiority to what has been called by a rival wark.

In 1606, James procured from the continent a large importation of mulberry trees, with a view to the establishment of the silk manufactory in his dominions; and, either in this year or in the following, Shakspeare enriched his garden at New Place with one of these exotic, and at that time, very rare trees. This plant of his hand took root, and flourished till the year 1752, when it was destroved by the barbarous axe of one Francis Gast

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