In 1614, the greater part of the town of Stratford was confumed by fire; but our Shakespeare's houfe, among fome others, escaped the flames. This houfe was first built by Sir Hugh Clopton, a younger brother of an ancient family in that neighbourhood, who took their name from the manor of Clopton. Sir Hugh was Sheriff of London, in the reign of Richard III. and lord-mayor in the reign of king Henry VII. To this gentleman the town of Stratford is indebted for the fine ftonebridge, confifting of fourteen arches, which, at an extraordinary expence, he built over the Avon, together with a caufeway running at the weft-end thereof; as alfo for rebuilding the chapeladjoining to his houfe, and the cross-ifle in the church there. It is remarkable of him, that, though he lived and died a batchelor, among the other extenfive charities which he left. both to the city of London and town of Stratford, he bequeathed confiderable legacies for the marriage of poor maidens of good name and fame both in London and at Stratford. Notwithstanding which large donations in his life, and bequests at his death, as he had purchased the manor of Clopton, and all the estate of the family, fo he left the fame again to his elder brother's fon with a very great addition (a proof how well beneficence and economy may walk hand in had in wife families): good part of which eftate is yet in the poffeffion of Edward Clopton, efq; and Sir Hugh Clopton, knt. lineally defcended from the elder brother of the firft Sir Hugh: who particularly bequeathed to his nephew, by his will, his house, by the name of his Great Houfe in Stratford. The eftate had now been fold out of the Clopton family for above a century, at the time when Shakespeare became the purchaser: who, having repaired and modelled it to his own mind, changed the name to New-place; which the manfion-house, fince erected upon the fame spot, at this day retains. The house and lands, which attended it, continued in Shakespeare's defcendants to the time of the Reforation when they were repurchased by the Clopton family, and the manfion now belongs to Sir Hugh Clopton, knt. Again, near the wall on which this monument is erected, is a plain free-ftone, under which his body is buried, with another epitaph, expreffed in the following uncouth mixture of small and capital letters: Good Frend for Iefus SAKE forbeare To the favour of this worthy gentleman I owe the knowledge of one particular, in honour of our poet's once dwellinghoufe, of which, I prefume, Mr. Rowe never was apprized. When the civil war raged in England, and king Charles the Firft's queen was driven by the neceflity of affairs to make a recefs in Warwick fhire, the kept her court for three weeks in New-place. We may reafonably fuppofe it then the best private houfe in the town; and her majefty preferred it to the college, which was in the pofleffion of the Combe family, who did not fo ftrongly favour the king's party. How much our author employed himfelf in poetry, after his retirement from the ftage, does not fo evidently appear: very few pofthumous fketches of his pen have been recovered to afcertain that point. We have been told, indeed, in print, but not till very lately, that two large chefts full of this great man's loofe papers and manufcripts, in the hands of an ignorant baker of Warwick (who married one of the defcendants from our Shakespeare) were carelessly scattered and thrown about as garret-lumber and litter, to the particular knowledge of the late Sir William Bifhop, till they were all confumed in the general fire and deftruction of that town. I cannot help being a little apt to diftruft the authority of this tradition: becaufe his wife furvived him seven years, and as his favourite daughter Sufanna furvived her twenty-fix years, it is very improbable they fhould fuffer fuch a treasure to be removed, and tranflated into a remoter branch of the family, without a fcrutiny firft made into the value of it. This, I fay, inclines me to diftruft the authority of the relation: but, notwithstanding fuch an apparent improbability, if we really loft fuch a treafure, by whatever fatality or caprice of fortune they came into fuch ignorant and neglectful hands, I agree with the relater, the misfortune is wholly irreparable. To thefe particulars, which regard his perfon and private life, fome few more are to be gleaned from Mr. Rowe's Account of his Life and Writings: let us now take a fhort view of him in his publick capacity as a writer: and, from thence, the tranfition will be eafy to the ftate in which his writings have been handed down to us. No age, perhaps, can produce an author more various from himfelf, than Shakespeare has been univerfally acknowledged to be. The diverfity in ftile, and other parts of compofition, fo obvious in him, is as varioufly to be accounted for. His education, we find, was at beft but begun and he he ftarted early into a fcience from the force of genius, unequally aflifted by acquired improvements. His fire, fpirit, and exuberance of imagination gave an impetuofity to his pen: his ideas flowed from him in a ftream rapid, but not turbulent; copious, but not ever overbearing its fhores. The ease and sweetness of his temper might not a little contribute to his facility in writing: as his employment, as a player, gave him an advantage and habit of fancying himself the very character he meant to delineate. He used the helps of his function in forming himfelf to create and exprefs that fublime, which other actors can only copy, and throw out, in action and graceful attitude. But, Nullum fine veniâ placuit ingenium, fays Seneca. The genius, that gives us the greatest pleasure, fometimes ftands in need of our indulgence. Whenever this happens with regard to Shakespeare, I would willingly impute it to a vice of his times. We fee complaifance enough, in our days, paid to a bad taste. So that his clinches, falfe wit, and defcending beneath himself, may have proceeded from a deference paid to the then reigning barbari/m. I have not thought it out of my province, whenever occafion offered, to take notice of fome of our poet's grand touches of nature: fome, that do not appear fufficiently fuch; but in which he feems the most deeply inftructed; and to which, no doubt, he has fo much owed that happy prefervation of his characters, for which he is justly celebrated. Great genius's, like his, naturally unambitious, are fatisfied to conceal their art in thefe points. It is the foible of your worfer poets to make a parade and oftentation of that little science they have; and to throw it out in the most ambitious colours. And whenever a writer of this class shall attempt to copy these artful concealments of our author, and shall either think them easy, or practifed by a writer for his ease, he will foon be convinced of his mistake by the difficulty of reaching the imitation of them. Speret idem, fudet multùm, fruftrâque laboret, Indeed, to point out and exclaim upon all the beauties of Shakespeare, as they come fingly in review, would be as infipid, as endlefs; as tedious, as unneceffary: but the explanation of those beauties that are lefs obvious to common readers, and whofe illuftration depends on the rules of just criticifm, [13] criticism, and an exact knowledge of human life, fhould defervedly have a fhare in a general critick upon the author. But to pass over at once to another subject: It has been allowed on all hands, how far our author was indebted to nature; it is not fo well agreed, how much he owed to languages and acquired learning. The decisions on this fubject were certainly fet on foot by the hint from Ben Jonfon, that he had finall Latin and lefs Greek: and from this tradition, as it were, Mr. Rowe has thought fit peremptorily to declare, that, " It is without controversy, he had no knowledge of the writings of the ancient poets, "for that in his works we find no traces of any thing which "looks like an imitation of the ancients. For the delicacy "of his tafte (continues he) and the natural bent of his own. great genius (equal, if not fuperior, to fome of the best "of theirs) would certainly have led him to read and stu"dy them with fo much pleasure, that fome of their fine "images would naturally have infinuated themselves into, " and been mixed with his own writings: and fo his not. "copying, at least, fomething from them, may be an ar"gument of his never having read them." I fhall leave it to the determination of my learned readers, from the numerous paffages which I have occafionally quoted in my notes, in which our poet fecms clofely to have imitated the clafficks, whether Mr. Rowe's affertion be so absolutely to be depended on. The refult of the controversy must certainly, either way, terminate to our author's honour: how happily he could imitate them, if that point be allowed; or how gloriously he could think like them, without owing any thing to imitation. Though I fhould be very unwilling to allow Shakespeare fo poor a scholar, as many have laboured to reprefent him, yet I fhall be very cautious of declaring too pofitively on the other fide of the queftion; that is, with regard to my opinion of his knowledge in the dead languages. And therefore the paffages, that I occafionally quote from the clafficks, fhall not be urged as proofs that he knowingly imitated those originals; but brought to fhew how happily he has expreffed himself upon the fame topicks. A very learned critick of our own nation has declared, that a famenefs of thought and famenefs of expreffion too, in two writers of a different age, can hardly happen, without a violent fufpicion of the latter copying from his predeceffor. I fhall not therefore run any great rifque of a cenfure, though I fhould fhould venture to hint, that the refemblances in thought and expreffion of our author and an ancient (which we should allow to be imitation in the one, whofe learning was not queftioned) may fometimes take its rife from ftrength of memory, and those impreffions which he owed to the fchool. And if we may allow a poffibility of this, confidering that, when he quitted the fchool, he gave into his father's profeffion and way of living, and had, it is likely, but a flender library of claffical learning; and confidering what a number of tranflations, romances, and legends started about his time, and a little before (most of which, it is very evident, he read) I think it may easily be reconciled, why he rather fchemed his plots and characters from these more latter informations, than went back to thofe fountains, for which he might entertain a fincere veneration, but to which he could not have fo ready a recourse. In touching on another part of his learning, as it related to the knowledge of history and books, I fhall advance fomething, that, at firft fight, will very much wear the appearance of a paradox. For I fhall find it no hard matter to prove, that, from the groffeft blunders in history, we are not to infer his real ignorance of it: nor from a greater use of Latin words, than ever any other English author used, must we infer his intimate acquaintance with that language. A reader of tafte may easily observe, that though Shakefpeare, almoft in every fcene of his hiftorical plays, commits the groffeft offences against chronology, hiftory, and ancient politicks; yet this was not through ignorance, as is generally fuppofed, but through the too powerful blaze of his imagination; which, when once raised, made all acquired knowledge vanifh and disappear before it. But this licence in him, as I have faid, muft not be imputed to ignorance: fince as often we may find him, when occafion ferves, reafoning up to the truth of hiftory; and throwing out fentiments as juftly adapted to the circumftances of his fubject, as to the dignity of his characters, or dictates of nature in general. Then to come to his knowledge of the Latin tongue, it is certain, there is a furprifing effufion of Latin words made. English, far more than in any one English author I have feen; but we must be cautious to imagine, this was of his own doing. For the English tongue, in his age, began extremely to fuffer by an inundation of Latin: and this, to be |