a likelihood too that Spenser, the greatest of Shakespeare's poetic contemporaries, was first drawn by the poems into the ranks of Shakespeare's admirers. It is hardly doubtful that Spenser described Shakespeare in 'Colin Clout's Come Home Again' (completed in 1594) under the name of 'Aetion."" The second one is copied from page 271, and illustrates the fact that Ward's testimony and the Bidford tradition, however ancient and venerable they really were, and although the first was the testimony of a preacher, did not particularly agree with his idea of what the real Shakespeare ought to be, and so he repudiates them "as unproven." "According to the testimony of John Ward, the vicar, Shakespeare entertained at New Place his two friends, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson, in this same spring of 1616, but it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted. A popular local legend, which was not recorded until 1762, credited Shakespeare with engaging at an earlier date in a prolonged and violent drinking bout at Bidford, a neighboring village, but his achievements as a hard drinker may be dismissed as unproven."

I will give one more citation from a most remarkable book, called "Shakespeare's True Life," by James Walters, at page 160. It will be noticed how, for the purpose of helping his pet theory that Shaksper was a lawyer's clerk or assistant, he chooses to differ from Rolfe on the length of time of the grammar school tuition, and it will also be noticed how cleverly he invents the facts as to Shaksper's legal education and training. He even furnishes us with a graphic account of the lawyers who stirred up strife in Stratford, and takes pains to place Shaksper as clerical assistant in the office of one of them. So litigious, he says,

were the Stratfordians, that there was a constant demand by the whole corps of lawyers for his valuable services as a connexion. How this talented biographer gathered all these incidents in Shaksper's early life, he fails to explain. If he invented them, he certainly surpasses all the others in inventive power, and that is saying a great deal. He says, on page 160: "There is little doubt as to his having left the grammar school at an age we in these days deem very early. In every feature of the matter, the balance of evidence favors his having acted as clerk assistant in the office of Walter Roche, his earliest instructor in the guild school. There are known to have been some half dozen attorneys practicing in that town at that time; one, in particular, acted for his father and the Hathaway family. Six lawyers in a place of its size would have an active time in setting their fellow townsmen by the ears sufficient to yield a living for the whole six, and it is known to have been much given to litigation in those days. Either of the number commanding his services. would derive no small advantage from what then, as now, is termed 'connexion.' Apart from young Will's talent in the office, we may rest assured that whatever he undertook would speedily bear the impress of his thought and action, and it is but reasonable to infer that a lawyer of clerical antecedents would remunerate him for services fairly, according to his ability and energy."

It is evident that the writer is not too tame. He would not be whipped for overdoing Termagant or out-heroding Herod. He can shoot arrows of imagination with a very long bow. His padding is unrivaled.

One of the many biographers, Frederick G. Fleay, shows in his introduction that he is very much ashamed of

his predecessors, for he says: "Previous investigators have, with industrious minuteness, already ascertained for us every detail that can reasonably be expected of Shaksper's private life. With laborious research they have raked together the records of petty debts, of parish assessments, of scandalous tradition, and of idle gossip. I do not think that, when stripped of verbiage and what the slang of the day calls padding, much more than this can be claimed as the result of the voluminous writings on this side of his career."

For my part, I wish that, for the sake of the truth of history, these searchers after facts had given their time to as industrious a search for the real author or authors of the poems and plays as they gave to these wretched, paltry details, which disgust the readers of Shaksper biographies.

One of the most amusing facts in connection with the Shaksperite idolaters is that when Ireland perpetrated his forgeries, consisting of a pretended letter of Queen Elizabeth to Shaksper, a pretended letter of Shaksper to the Earl of Southampton, pretended writings of Shaksper, and part of a pretended letter of Southampton to Shaksper, the men of taste, antiquarians and heralds, who viewed them unanimously testified in favor of their authenticity, and the world so believed until Malone, in his "Inquiry," exposed the forgery.

I can not help setting out from Malone's "Inquiry," page 163, for the amusement of the reader, one stanza of the verses pretended by Ireland to have been addressed by Shaksper to his mistress. The first stanza will suffice to show the reader how gullible Shaksper idolaters have been. I will not say "are now."

"Is there in heav-enne aught more rare
Than thou sweete nymphe of Avon fayre,
Is there onne earthe a manne more trewe
Than Willy Shakespeare is toe you."

Webb, in his "Mystery of Shakespeare," disposes of the conjectures and "might-have-been's" of the eulogists of Shaksper when he says: "The world is not made up of 'might-have-been's,' and we can not accept probabilities as facts, and we have not a particle of evidence to justify these assumptions. Still, if we choose to indulge our fancy, and to endow the player with that enormous receptivity with which he is endowed by Professor Dowden, if with the Professor we choose to compare him to the Arctic whale, which gulps in whole shoals of acalephæ and molluscs, we may account for that vast and various amount of information which strikes us with amazement in the later works of Shakespeare."

CHAPTER XV.

SHAKSPER'S REAL AND TRADITIONAL LIFE.

"As tedious as a twice-told tale."

-King John, iii, 4.

If William Shaksper of Stratford-upon-Avon did not write the plays and poems now attributed to him, the world at large would care very little about him, his family or his life-history. But that life-history, where it does not rest on vague tradition or mere invention but upon certain and fixed facts, is valuable as a means to identify the man Shaksper.

Rowe, the earliest biographer, says that he was the son of Mr. John Shaksper, who was a dealer in wool, while Aubrey says that his father was a butcher. William Shaksper was baptized on the 26th day of April, 1564, the baptismal entry on the register being as follows:

“1564 April 26th, Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere.”

On what day, month, and year he was born, no record has been found, and hence the date of his birth can not be fixed. Aubrey says that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade. Rowe says that "his father could give him no better education than his own employment, and that William went for a short time to a free school. He married while he was very young the daughter of one Hathaway, and afterwards falling into ill company he robbed the park of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote and to escape prosecution ran away from his home and his family to London. He died in the fifty-third year of his age, and