characteristic of the subject. It is a mistake to disallow our possession, in the case of Shakespeare, of the leading traits that are of most importance in a biography; and if matters subordinate have not been preserved, it was, I suspect, because such matters had no more than their true importance to admiring, affectionate, and revering contemporaries. The generation most solicitous for the minutiae of biography will not be the one that enters most fully into the spirit of the poet. The memory of the man, to those who knew him, was a living feeling, like the appreciation of his works, and they have expressed the characteristics of both in language as simple and concise as forcible, and it is little indeed that we can add to the main result by either antiquarian collection or analytical criticism; and as regards the relation of the character of the man to the sentiment of his works, it seems to have been a feeling of their perfect harmony that made his friends and fellows speak of the preservation of his plays as identical with the eternal memory of his personal sensibilities and proper worth. For the rest,the incomparable genius of the man would alone account for his surmounting difficulties, however great,—though, as in the case of other great successes, fortune and opportunity did give sympathetic aid. Something of this sympathy, also, there was in the epoch both of political movement and of dramatic, but after all we must admit that such influence is manifestly but ancillary to the self-sustained endowment of the poet, when we find that it is all but lost upon feebler contemporaries. From this point of view, then, I should oe well contented not to diverge, and to ask no more for a biography of Shakespeare than is furnished by the expressions and allusions of those who were his immediate associates and contemporaries: these are facts that are not only the most interesting but among the most authentic, and it is only when we descend to matters that in comparison are of minor grade, that we get entangled among the dishonesties of forged traditions and of documents that are more difficult to deal with when merely impugned than when manifestly falsified or fabricated. This mischief dates very early in these investigations, and it is an unhappy result of some detections that more are expected, and that a place of standing cannot be in justice or prudence refused to accusations that otherwise would be pushed aside as mere rancorous rivalry. Leaving aside-whether for oblivion or further question-these tainted witnesses, we may pay rather more attention to the vague traditions that need not be suspected of much other corruption than accrues unconsciously, that can be traced as current approximately in time and locality, and that belong to a class which cannot be altogether wanting-the alterations of facts that tradition fids easier than original invention. What authentic particulars beyond these have rewarded the patient research of antiquaries are for the most part dry and disjointed facts, fruitful in conjectures which can be sought elsewhere, less fruitful of trustworthy deduction; taken, however, altogether, they do make up a certain sequence of connected facts in that lower or outer life of the man and the Englishman of the sixteenth cen tury, and do occasionally reflect a ray upon the more valuable records of his true existence as a poet and a humanist, enfranchised—sovereign, for all time. Shakespeare died in 1616: Sir William Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656, connects his name with a monumental date or two; and Fuller, with a quibble or two, in his Worthies, published 1662. In this latter year died Judith Quiney, the daughter of Shakespeare's youth, having survived the Commonwealth. In the same year John Ward, A. M. became vicar of Stratford, and his Diary, in MS. in the library of the Medical Society of London, which commences earlier, and extends to 1679, has this notice :-" I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all: he frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for it had an allowance so large that he spent at the rate of £1000 a year, as I have heard.” In 1675, Ed. Phillips, the nephew of Milton, published his Theatrum Poetarum, prepared before Milton's death, and reflecting many of his opinions: he bestows a few lines on Shakespeare, but of eulogy and criticism, not biography : "William Shakespeare, the glory of the English stage, whose nativity at Stratford upon Avon is the highest honour that town can boast of; from an actor of tragedies and comedies he became a maker, and such a maker, that though some others may, perhaps, pretend to a more exact decorum and economy, especially in tragedy, never any expressed a more lofty and tragic height, never any represented nature more purely to the life; and where the polishments of art are most wanting, as probably his learning was not extraordinary, he pleaseth with a certain wild and native elegance: and in all his writings hath an unvulgar style, as well in his Venus and Adonis, his Rape of Lucrece, and other various poems, as in his dramaticks." About 1680, is to be dated the first antiquarian notice of Shakespeare's life, and here are the contents of the indiscriminate dragnet of Aubrey, from his "Minutes of Lives," addressed to Anthony à Wood. "Mr. William Shakespeare was born at Stratford upon Avon, in the county of Warwick; his father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade, but when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this town that was held not at all inferior to him for a natural wit, his acquaintance and coetanean, but died young. This William being naturally inclined to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about eighteen, and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and did act exceedingly well. Now B. Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor. He began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very low, and his plays took well. Hẹ was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit. "The humour of . the constable in Midsummer Night's Dream, he happened to take at Grendon, in Bucks, which is the road from London to Stratford, and there was living that constable in 1642, when I first came to Oxon. I think it was Midsummer night that he happened to lie there. Mr. Jos. How is of that parish, and knew him. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men daily, wherever they came. One time, as he was at the tavern at Stratford super Avon, one Combes, an old rich usurer, was to be buried; he makes there this extemporary epitaph : Ten in the hundred the devil allows, But Combes will have twelve, he swears and vows; Hoh! quoth the devil, 'tis my John O'Combe! He was wont to go to his native country once a year. I think I have been told that he left 2 or 300 li. per annum, there or thereabout to a sister. I have heard Sir Wm. D'avenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best comedian we have now) say, that he had a most prodigious wit (v. his epitaph in Dugdale's Warw.), and did admire his natural parts beyond all other dramatical writers. He (Ben Jonson's Underwood) was wont to say that he never blotted out a line in his life; said Ben Jonson, I wish he had blotted out a thousand.' His comedies will remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum: now our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombities, that twenty years hence they will not be understood. "Though, as Ben Jonson says of him, that he had but little Latin and less Greek, he understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country. From Mr...... Beeston." It would be well if longer biographies contained as large a proportion that may not be gainsaid: Aubrey cites " some of the neighbours" as his most direct informants, and evidently exercised neither industry nor criticism in his inquiry; but later investigation must approve his information at least to this, not inconsiderable extent : 66 Shakespeare was born at Stratford, his father ranked with the tradesmen of the town, and his own prospects were therefore not more elevated. Genius for poetry, however, and at least a passion for acting, carried him, vivacious and perhaps unsettled, to the stage. He arrived in London quite a young man, and was not unsuccessful as an actor, but at once commenced writing plays, and, making great advances beyond existing dramas, became very popular. He was of comely person, social temperament, lively and engaging in wit and manners, very observant of mankind, and sometimes not indisposed to transfer an original from nature to the stage direct; the companion of Ben Jonson and contemporary of John Combe, a man of capital at Stratford. He preserved his attachment to his native town to the last, and left considerable property, which, however, passed into the female line. He wrote with fluency, and eschewed laborious correction. He had sufficient knowledge of Latin to give countenance to at least the report, that in youth he had been a schoolmaster in the country." Aubrey's informant, Mr. Beeston, quoted for the last fact, if so it were, was probably Christopher Beeston, who was a theatrical apprentice to Augustine Phillips in Shakespeare's company, and continued on the stage till the civil wars. (See Collier's Lives of Actors.) In 1690, or thereabouts, an Archdeacon of Lichfield was found, Mr. Richard Davies, whose manuscripts, in college keeping, furnish this memorandum.—“ Shakespeare. He was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits; particularly from Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country, to his great advancement: But his revenge was so great, that he is his justice Clodpate; and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three lowses rampant for his arms.” Even this garbage contains something that may not be cast aside, and is the earliest authentic hint preserved of the satirical reference of Justice Shallow to Sir Thos. Lucy, whatever was the provocation. On April 10, 1693, a Mr. Dowdall addressed a small treatise in the form of a letter to Mr. Edward Southwell, describing several places in Warwickshire, among them Stratford, where he culls the inscriptions on Shakespeare's monument, and adds this note ("Halliwell's Life," p. 87):: "Near the wall where his monument is erected lieth a plain freestone, underneath which his body is buried, with this epitaph, made by himself a little before his death : Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here! Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones. The clerk that showed me this church is above eighty years old; he says that this Shakespeare was formerly in this town bound apprentice to a butcher, but that he run from his master to Lon |