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merit, and, with his influence, obtained its introduction on the stage. To this story some specious objections have been raised; and there cannot be any necessity for contending for it, as no lucky accident can be required to account for the inducement of amity between two men of high genius, each ed to Shakspeare by the Earls of Pembroke and Of the degree of patronage and kindness extendtreading the same broad path to fame and fortune, Montgomery, we are altogether ignorant: but we yet each with a character so peculiarly his own, know, from the dedication of his works to them by that he might attain his object without wounding the Heminge and Condell, that they had distinguished pride or invading the interests of the other. It has themselves as his admirers and friends. That he been generally believed that the intellectual superi-numbered many more of the nobility of his day ority of Shakspeare excited the envy and the con- among the homagers of his transcendent genius, sequent enmity of Jonson. It is well that of these we may consider as a specious probability. But asserted facts no evidences can be adduced. The we must not indulge in conjectures, when we can friendship of these great men seems to have been gratify ourselves with the reports of tradition, apunbroken during the life of Shakspeare; and, on proaching very nearly to certainties. Elizabeth, as his death, Jonson made an offering to his memory it is confidently said, honoured our illustrious draof high, just, and appropriate panegyric. He places matist with her especial notice and regarda She him above not only the modern but the Greek dra was unquestionably fond of theatric exhibitions; matists; and he professes for him admiration short and, with her literary mind and her discriminating only of idolatry. They who can discover any pe- eye, it is impossible that she should overlook; and nuriousness of praise in the surviving poet must be that, not overlooking, she should not appreciate the gifted with a very peculiar vision of mind.. With man, whose genius formed the prime glory of her the flowers, which he strewed upon the grave of reigned It is affirmed that, delighted with the cha his friend, there certainly was not blended one racter of Falstaff as drawn in the two parts of Henry poisonous or bitter leaf. If, therefore, he was, as IV., she expressed a wish to see the gross and dishe is represented to have been by an impartial and solute knight under the influence of love; and that able judge, (Drummond of Hawthornden,) "a great the result of our Poet's compliance, with the desire lover and praiser of himself a contemner and of his royal mistress, was "The Merry Wives of scorner of others; jealous of every word and ac- Windsor." Favoured, however, as our Poet tion of those about him," &c. &c., how can we seems to have been by Elizabeth, and notwithotherwise account for the uninterrupted harmony of standing the fine incense which he offered to her his intercourse with our bard than by supposing vanity, it does not appear that he profited in any that the frailties of his nature were overruled by degree by her bounty. She could distinguish and that pre-eminence of mental power in his friend could smile upon genius but unless it were imme which precluded competition; and by his friend's diately serviceable to her personal or her political sweetness of temper and gentleness of manners, interests, she had not the soul to reward it. How which repressed every feeling of hostility. Be ever inferior to her in the arts of government and tween Shakspeare and Thomas Wriothesly, the in some of the great characters of mind might bo munificent and the noble Earl of Southampton, dis her Scottish successor, he resembled her in his love tinguished in history by his inviolable attachment of letters, and in his own cultivation of learning. to the rash and the unfortunate Essex, the friendship He was a scholar, and even a poet his attach was permanent and ardent. At its commencement, ment to the general cause of literature was strong; in 1593, when Shakspeare was twenty-nine years and his love of the drama and the theatre was par of age, Southampton was not more than nineteen; ticularly warm. Before his accession to the Eng and, with the love of general literature, he was lish throne he had written, as we have before no particularly attached to the exhibitions of the thea- ticed, a letter, with his own hand, to Shakspeare, tre. His attention was first drawn to Shakspeare by the poet's dedication to him of the Venus and Adonis," that "first heir," as the dedicator calls it of his invention;" and the acquaintance, once begun between characters and hearts like theirs, would soon mature into intimacy and friendship. In the following year (1594) Shakspeare's second poem, "The Rape of Lucrece," was addressed by him to his noble patron in a strain of less distant timidity; and we may infer from it that the poet had then obtained a portion of the favour which he sought. That his fortunes were essentially promoted by the munificent patronage of Southampton cannot reasonably be doubted, We are told by Sir William Davenant, who surely possessed the means of knowing the fact, that the peer gave at one time to his favoured dramatist the magnificent present of a thousand pounds. This is rejected by Malone as an extravagant exaggeration; and be cause the donation is said to have been made for the purpose of enabling the poet to complete a pur-assistance of the crown chase which he had then in contemplation; and because, no purchase, of an adequate magnitude to John Kemble of 10,000. seems to have been, accomplished by him, the cri- Animated as this comedy is with much distinct de tic treats the whole story with contempt; and is lineation of character, it cannot be pronounced to Le desirous of substituting a dedication fee of one hun unworthy of its great author. But it evinces the differ dred pounds for the more princely liberality which ing with effect under the control of another mind. As is attested by Davenant. But surely a purchase he spared in the scenes of Henry IV., Falstaff was in culty of writing upon a prescribed subject and of work might be within the view of Shakspeare, and even-sm-ceptible of love and the egregious dupe of Windsor, tually not be effected; and then of course the ducked and cudgelled as he was, cannot be the wit of thousand pounds in question would be added to his Eastcheap, or the guest of Shallow, or the military personal property he is reported to have retired Fold what be equal to revive his own Falstaff: bua where it would just complete genius of Shakspeare could not effect impossibilities: commander on the field of Shrewsbury. But even the from the stage. As to the incredibility of the gift the life which he reinfused into his creature was not the in consequence of its value, have we not witnessed vigorous vitality of Nature; and he placed him in gift, made in the prosent day, by a noble of the scene where he could not subsist.

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cannot pretend to determine it. As he is said, however, to have passed some years in his estab lishment at New Place, we may conclude that his removal took place either in 1612 or in 1613, when he was yet in the vigour of life, being not more than forty-eight or forty-nine years old. He had ceased, as it is probable, to tread the stage as an prefixed to the Volpone of B. Jonson, performed at the Globe theatre, and published in 1605, the name of William Shakspeare is not to be found. However versed he might be in the science of acting, (and that he was versed in it we are assured by his directions to the players in Hamlet,) and, however well he might acquit himself in some of the subor

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 Poetspeare 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 to be the servants of the King. The patent is dated on the 19th of May, 1603, and the name of William Shakspeare stands second on the list of the patentees. As the demise of Elizabeth had occurred on the 24th of the preceding March, this early attention of James to the company of the Globe may be regarded 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 oreign's partiality for the drama. But James' patronage of our Poet was not in any other way beneficial to his fortunes. If Elizabeth were too parsimonious for an effective patron, by his profusion on his pleasures and his favourites, James soon became too needy to possess the means of bounty for 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 fayour of two successive sovereigns, each of them versed in literature, each of them fond of the drama, and each of them capable of appreciating the transcendency of his genius.

that he ever rose to the higher honours of his profession. But if they were above his attainment, they seem not to have been the objects of his ambition; for by one of his sonnets* we find that he 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 3004. 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, assigrs a rably more than a third part of it, is an unknown random value to his personal, it is reduced to 200%, 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 propopulation; 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 thẻ 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. genius,

In 1606, James procured from the continent a large importation of mulberry trees, with a view to

"The last infirmity of noble minds,”

the establishment of the silk manufactory in his as that which was now exhibited by our illustrious dominions; and, either in this year or in the fol-dramatist and poet. He seemed

lowing, 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 de#troyed by the barbarous axe of one Francis Gast

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With a privilege, rarely indulged even to the sons | make them worse, are said to have been written of genius, he had produced his admirable works after Combe's death. Steevens and Malone dis without any throes or labour of the mind: they had credit the whole tale. The two first lines, as given obtained for him all that he had asked from them, to us by Rowe, are unquestionably not Shak-the patronage of the great, the applause of the speare's; and that any lasting enmity subsisted witty, and a competency of fortune adequate to between these two burghers of Stratford is disprothe moderation of his desires. Having fulfilled, or, ved by the respective wills of the parties, John possibly, exceeded his expectations, they had dis- Combe bequeathing five pounds to our Poet, and charged their duty; and he threw them altogether our Poet leaving his sword to John Combe's nefrom his thought; and whether it were their des- phew and residuary legatee, John Combe himself tiny to emerge into renown, or to perish in the being at that time deceased. With the two comdrawer of a manager; to be brought to light in a mentators above mentioned, I am inclined, therefore, state of integrity, or to revisit the glimpses of the on the whole, to reject the story as a fabrication; moon with a thousand mortal murders on their head, though I cannot, with Steevens, convict the lines of engaged no part of his solicitude or interest. They malignity; or think, with him and with Malone, that had given to him the means of easy life, and he the character of Shakspeare, on the supposition of sought from them nothing more. This insensi- his being their author, could require any laboured bility in our Author to the offspring of his brain vindication to clear it from stain. In the anecdote, may be the subject of our wonder or admira- as related by Rowe, I can see nothing but a whimtion: but its consequences have been calamitous sical sally, breaking from the mind of one friend, to those who in after times have hung with delight and of a nature to excite a good-humoured smile on over his pages. On the intellect and the temper of the cheek of the other, In Aubrey's hands, the these ill-fated mortals it has inflicted a heavy load transaction assumes a somewhat darker comof punishment in the dullness and the arrogance of plexion; and the worse verses, as written after the commentators and illustrators-in the conceit and death of their subject, may justly be branded as petulance of Theobald; the imbecility of Capell; malevolent, and as discovering enmity in the heart the pert and tasteless dogmatism of Steevens; the of their writer. But I have dwelt too long upon ponderous littleness of Malone and of Drake. Some topic which, in truth, is undeserving of a syllable; superior men, it is true, have enlisted themselves and if I were to linger on it any longer, for the purpose in the cause of Shakspeare. Rowe, Pope, War- of exhibiting Malone's reasons for his preference of burton, Hanmer, and Johnson have successively Aubrey's copy of the epitaph to Rowe's, and his been his editors; and have professed to give his discovery of the propriety and beauty of the single scenes in their original purity to the world. But Ho in the last line of Aubrey's, as Ho is the abbre from some cause or other, which it is not our pre-viation of Hobgoblin, one of the names of Robin sent business to explore, each of these editors, in Good-fellow, the fairy servant of Oberon, my readhis turn, has disappointed the just expectations of ers would have just cause to complain of me, as the public; and, with an inversion of Nature's sporting with their time and their patience. general rule, the little men have finally prevailed against the great. The blockheads have hooted the wits from the field; and, attaching themselves to the mighty body of Shakspeare, like barnacles to the hull of a proud man of war, they are prepared to plough with him the vast ocean of time; and thus, by the only means in their power, to snatch them- his humour; the gentleness of his manners; the flow With his various powers of pleasing; his wit and selves from that oblivion to which Nature had devo- of his spirits and his fancy; the variety of anec ted them. It would be unjust, however, to defraud dote with which his mind must have been stored; these gentlemen of their proper praise. They have his knowledge of the world, and his intimacy read for men of talents; and, by their gross labour with man, in every gradation of the socioty, from in the mine, they have accumulated materials to the prompter of a playhouse to the peer and the be arranged and polished by the hand of the finer sovereign, Shakspeare must have been a delightful artist. Some apology may be necessary for this-nay, a fascinating companion; and his acquainshort digression from the more immediate subject tance must necessarily have been courted by all of my biography. But the three or four years, which were passed by Shakspeare in the peaceful retirement of New Place are not distinguished by any traditionary anecdote deserving of our record; and the chasm may not improperly be supplied with whatever stands in contiguity with it. I should pass in silence, as too trifling for notice, the story of our Poet's extempore and jocular epitaph on John Combe, a rich townsman of Stratford, and a youngest daughter, Judith, then in the thirtyOn the 2d of February, 1615-16, he married his noted money-lender, if my readers would not object first year of her age, to Thomas Quiney, a vintner to me that I had omitted an anecdote which had in Stratford; and on the 25th of the succeeding been honoured with a place in every preceding bio-month he executed his will. He was then, as it graphy of my author. As the circumstance is re- would appear, in the full vigour and enjoyment of lated by Rowe, "In a pleasant conversation among life; and we are not informed that his constitution their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakspeare, had been previously weakened by the attack of any in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended malady. But his days, or rather his hours, were now to write his epitaph if he happened to outlive him: and, since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately: upon which Shakspeare gave him these four verses:

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Ten in the hundred lies here ingraved:

Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved.
If any man ask, who lies in this tomb:
Ho! Ho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John a Combe.

But the sharpness of the satire is said to have stung
the man so severely that he never forgave it." By
ubrey the story is differently told; and the lines
question, with some alterations, which evidently

it most unfortunately began with the year 1617; and the preceding part of the register, which most probably had been in existence, could no where be found. The mortal complaint, therefore, of William Shakspeare is likely to remain for ever unknown; and as darkness had closed upon his path through life, so darkness now gathered round his bed of death, awfully to cover it from the eyes of succeed. ing generations.

whose expense the monument was constructed, nor by whose hand it was executed; nor at what precise time it was erected. It may have been wrought by the artist, acting under the recollections of the Shakspeare family into some likeness of the great townsman of Stratford; and on this proba bility, we may contemplate it with no inconside rable interest. I cannot, however, persuade mys self that the likeness could have been strong. The forehead, indeed, is sufficiently spacious and intellectual: but there is a disproportionate length in the under part of the face the mouth is weak; and the whole countenance is heavy and inert. Not having seen the monument itself, I can speak of it only from its numerous copies by the graver; and by these it is possible that I may be deceived. But if we cannot rely on the Stratford best for a resemblance of our immortal dramatist, where are we to look with any hope of tinding a trace of his features? It is highly probable that no portrait of him was painthim, with an incontestible claim to genuineness, is at present in existence. The fairest title to authenticity seems to be assignable to that which is called the Chandos portrait; and is now in the col lection of the Duke of Buckingham, at Stowe. The possession of this picture can be distinctly traced up to. Betterton and Davenant. Through the hands of successive purchasers, it became the property of Mr. Robert Keek. On the marriage of the herr ess of the Keck family, it passed to Mr. Nicholl, of Colney-Hatch, in Middlesex: on the union of this gentleman's daughter with the Duke of Chandos, it found a place in that nobleman's collection; and, finally, by the marriage of the present Duke of Buckingham with the Lady Anne Elizabeth Brydges, the heiress of the house of Chandos, it has settled in the gallery of Stowe. This was pronounced by the late Earl of Orford, (Horace Walpole,) as we are informed by Mr. Granger, to be the only origi nal picture of Shakspeare. But two others, if not more, contend with it for the palm of originality; one, which in consequence of its having been in the pos session of Mr. Felton, of Drayton, in the county of Salop, from whom it was purchased by the Boydells, has been called the Felton Shakspeare; and one, miniature, which, by some connection, as I believe, with the family of its proprietors, found its way into the cabinet of the late Sir James Lamb, more gene-; rally, perhaps, known by his original name of James Bland Borgess. The first of these pictures was reported to have been found at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, one of the favourite haunts, as it was' erroneously called, of Shakspeare and his compa nions; and the second by a tradition, in the family 9 GDY of Somervile the poet, is affirmed to have been drawn from Shakspeare, who sute for it at the pres and the flat stone, covering the grave, holds out, in sing instance of a Somervile, one of his most inti very irregular characters, a supplication to the read-mate friends. But the genuineness of neither of er, with the promise of a blessing and the menace of a curse

On the 25th of April, 1616, two days after his de ccase, he was buried in the chancel of the church of Stratford and at some period within the seven subsequent years, (for in 1623 it is noticed in the verses of Leonard Digges,) a monument was raised to his memory either by the respect of his towns men, or by the piety of his relations. It represents the Poet with a countenance of thought, resting on a cushion and in the act of writing. It is placed under an arch, between two Corinthian columns of black marble, the capitals and bases of which are gilt. The face is said, but, as far as I can find, noted during his life; and it is certain that no portrait of on any adequate authority, to have been modelled from the face of the deceased; and the whole was painted, to bring the imitation nearer to nature. The face and the hands wore the carnation of life the eyes were light hazel: the hair and beard were auburn: a black gown, without sleeves, hung loosely over a scarlet doublet. The cushion in its upper part was green: in its lower, crimson and the tassels were of gold colour. This certainly was not in the high classical taste.;, though we may learn from Pausanias that statues in Greece were sometimes coloured after life; but as it was the work of contemporary hands, and was intended, by those who knew the Poet, to convey to posterity some resemblance of his lineaments and dress, It was a monument of rare value; and the tastelessness of Malone, who caused all its tints to be obliterated with a daubing of white lead, cannot be sufficiently ridiculed and condembad. Its material is a species of free-stone; and as the chisel of the sculptor was most probably under the guidance of Doctor Hall, it bore some promise of likeness to the mighty dead. Immediately below the cushion is the following distichi ; i

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Judicio Pylium; genio Socratem; arte Maronem
Terra tegit; populus maret; Olympus habet.
On a tablet underneath are inscribed these lines

Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast?"
Read, if thou can'st, whom envious death has placed
Within this monument-Shakspeare; with whom
Quick Nature died ; whose name doth deck the tomb
Far more than cost since all that he hath writ
Leaves living art but page to serve his wit a

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"Good Friend! for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust inclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones; And cursed be he that moves my bones, baby The last of these inscriptions may have been written by Shakspeare himself under the apprehension of his bones being tumbled, with those of many of his townsmen, into the charnel-house of the parish, But his dust has continued unviolated, and is likely to remain in its holy repose, till the last awful scene of our perishable globe. It were to be wished that the two preceding inscriptions were more worthy, than they are, of the tomb to which they are at tached. It would be gratifying if we could give any faith to the tradition, which asserts that the bust of this monument was sculptured from a cast moulded on the face of the departed poet.; for then we might assure ourselves that we possess one authentie resemblance of this pre-eminently intellectual, mortal. But the cast, if taken, must have been taken im mediately after his death, and we know neither at

these pictures can be supported under a rigid investigation and their pretensions must yield to those of another rival portrait of our Poet, which was once in the possession of Mr. Jennens, of Gop-? sal in Leicestershire, and is now the property of that liberal and literary nobleman, the Duke of Somerset. For the authenticity of this portrait, attributed to the pencil of Cornelius Jansenn, Mr. Boaden* contends with much zeal and ingenuity. Knowing that some of the family of Lord Southampton, Shakspeare's especial friend and patron, had been painted by Jansenn, Mr. Boaden speciously infersthat, at the Earl's quest, his favourite dramatist had, likewise, allowed his face to this painter's imitation; and that the Gopsal portrait, the result of the artist's skill on this occasion, had obtained a distinguished place in the picture-gallery of the noble Earl. This, however, is only unsupported assertion, and the mere idleness of conjec fure. It is not pretended to be ascertained that the Gopsal portrait was ever in the possession of Shak

An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Pictures ant Prints offered as Portraits of Shakspeare, p. 07--80 2.

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