left him 51. as a token of kind remembrance in his will; and that no feud afterwards arose between our poet and the relations of Combe, seems pretty evident from Shakspeare's having bequeathed his sword to Mr. Thomas Combe, the nephew of the usurer.

In addition to the above ludicrous verses, two epitaphs of a serious character have been ascribed to Shakspeare by Sir William Dugdale, which are preserved in a collection of epitaphs at the end of the Visitation of Salop. Among the monuments in Tongue Church, in the county of Salop, is one erected in remembrance of Sir Thomas Stanly, knight, whom Malone supposes to have died about 1600. The tomb stands on the north side of the chancel, supported with Corinthian columns. It hath two figures of men in armour lying on it, one below the arches and columns, the other above them; and besides a prose inscription in front, the monument is enriched by the following verses of Shakspeare.

Written on the east end of the tomb :
Aske who lyes here, but do not weepe;
He is not dead, he doth but sleepe.
This stony register is for his bones,
His fame is more perpetual than these stones:
And his own goodness, with himself being gone,
Shall live, when earthly monument is none.

Written on the west end thereof:

'Not monumental stone preserves our fame,
Nor skye-aspiring pyramids our name.
The memory of him for whom this stands,
Shall outlive marble, and defacer's hands.
When all to time's consumption shall be given,
Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in
heaven.'

The life of our poet was now drawing towards its close; and he was soon to require from the hands of others those last honours to the dead, which, while alive, he had shewn himself so ready to contribute. His eldest and favourite daughter, Susanna, had been married as early as 1607, to Dr. Hall, a physician of considerable skill and reputation in his profession, who resided at Stratford; and early in 1616, his youngest daughter, Judith, married Mr. Thomas Quiney. a vintner of the same place. This ceremony took place on February the 10th. On the twentyfifth of the following month, her father made his will-being, according to his own account, in perfect health and memory—and a second month had not elapsed before Shakspeare was no more. He died on the twenty-third of April, 1616, and on his birth-day, having completed his fiftysecond year. It is remarkable,' says Dr. Drake, that on the same day expired, in Spain, his great and amiable contemporary Cervantes; and the world was thus deprived, nearly at the same moment, of the two most original writers which modern Europe has produced."

Of the disease by which the life of our poet was thus suddenly terminated, we are left in ignorance. His son-in-law, Dr. Hall, left for publication a manuscript collection of cases, selected from not less than a thousand diseases; but the earliest case recorded is dated 1617, and thus all mention is omitted of the only one which could have secured to his work any permanent interest or value.

On the second day after his decease, the remains of Shakspeare were interred on the north side of the chancel of the great church of Stratford. Here a monument, containing a bust of Besides these inscriptions for the monument of the poet, was erected to his memory. He is Sir Thomas Stanly, which we have the authority represented under an arch, in a sitting posture, of Dugdale, a Warwickshire man, and who spent a cushion spread before him, with a pen in his the greater part of his life in that county, for at-right hand, and his left rested on a scroll of tributing to our author; we find another epitaph paper. The following Latin distich is engraved ascribed to him in a manuscript volume of poems under the cushion : by William Herrick, and others. The volume, which is in the hand-writing of the time of Charles the First, is among Rawlinson's Collections, in the Bodleian Library, and contains the following epitaph:

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, populus mæret, Olympus habet.

The first syllable in Socratem is here made short,
which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we should
read Sophoclem. Shakspeare is then appositely
compared with a dramatic author among the an-
cients: but still it should be remembered, that
the eulogium is lessened while the metre is re-
formed; and it is well known, that some of our
early writers of Latin poetry were uncommonly
negligent in their prosody, especially in proper
names. The thought of this distich, as Mr
Tollet observes, might have been taken from
The Faery Queene of Spenser.+

+ Book 2. c. 9. st. 48, and c. 10. st. 3.

To this Latin inscription on Shakspeare, | bined with such talents, should be the object of should be added the lines which are found under- sincere and ardent friendship, can excite no surneath it on his monument: prise. "I loved the man," says Jonson, with a noble burst of enthusiasm, "and do honour his

Stay passenger, why dost thou go so fast?

Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plac'd memory on this side idolatry, as much as any.

Within this monument; Shakspeare, with whom
Quick nature dy'd; 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.'

Obiit Ano. Dni. 1616.

Æt. 53, die 23 Apri.'

He was, indeed, honest; and of an open and free
nature;" and Rowe, repeating the uncontra-
dicted rumour of times past, has told us," that
who had a true taste of merit, and
every one,
could distinguish men, had generally a just valuc
and esteem for him ;" adding, "that his exceed-
ing candour and good-nature must certainly have

And on his grave-stone underneath, is inscribed: inclined all the gentler part of the world to love

Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear

To dig the dust inclosed here.

Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.'

The tomb at Stratford is not the only monumental tribute that has been raised to the honour of Shakspeare. A cenotaph was subsequently erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey, by the direction of the Earl of Burlington, Pope, Dr. Mead, and Mr. Martyn. This monument, which cost three hundred pounds, was the work of Scheemaker, after a design by Kent, and was opened in January, 1741; one hundred and twenty-five years after the death of our author. The dean and chapter of Westminster gave the ground, and the expenses of the statuary were defrayed by a benefit at each of the London theatres. The receipts of Drury Lane exceeded two hundred pounds; at Covent Garden they did not amount to more than half that sum.

him."

No greater proof, indeed, can be given of the felicity of his temper, and the sweetness of his manners, than that all who addressed him, seem to have uniformly connected his name with the epithets worthy, gentle, or beloved; nor was he backward in returning this esteem, many of his sonnets indicating the warmth with which he cherished the remembrance of his friends. Thus the thirtieth opens with the following pensive retrospect:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh-

For precious friends, hid in death's dateless night.'
And in the thirty-first he tenderly exclaims :-

How many a holy and obsequious tear,
Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,
As interest of the dead!'

a striking resemblance to Chaucer, who was remarkable for the placidity and cheerfulness of his disposition; nor can there, probably, be a surer indication of that peace and sunshine of the soul which surpasses all other gifts, tnan tais habitual tone of mind.

'Another very fascinating feature in the chaOf the genius of Shakspeare it were in this racter of Shakspeare, was the almost constant place superfluous to write: that task has been cheerfulness and serenity of his mind: he was performed by others; and is sufficiently discussed "verie good company," says Aubrey, “and of a in the discourses of Rowe, and Pope, and very ready, and pleasant, and smooth witt." In Johnson; but of his disposition and moral chathis, as Mr. Godwin has justly observed, he bore racter, may not be uninteresting to give the following passage from Dr. Drake:- To these tradition has ever borne the most uniform and favourable testimony. And, indeed, had she been silent on the subject, his own works would have whispered to us the truth; would have told us, in almost every page, of the gentleness, the benevolence, and the goodness, of his heart. For, though no one has exceeded him in painting the stronger passions of the human breast, it is evident that he delighted most in the expression of loveliness and simplicity, and was ever willing to descend from the loftiest soarings of imagination, to sport with innocence and beauty. Though "the world of spirits and of nature," says the admirable Schlegel, "had laid all their treasures at his feet in strength a demi-god, in profundity of view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a protecting spirit of a higher order, he yet lowered himself to mortals, as if unconscious of his superiority, and was as open and unassuming as a child."

That a temper of this description, and com

That Shakspeare was entitled to its possession from his moral virtues, we have already seen; and that, in a religious point of view, he had a claim to the enjoyment, the numerous passages in his works, which breathe a spirit of pious gratitude and devotional rapture, will sufficiently declare. In fact, upon the topic of religious, as upon that of ethic wisdom, no profane poet can furnish us with a greater number of just and luminous aphorisms; passages which dwell upon the heart, and reach the soul; for they have issued from lips of re, from conceptions worthy of a superior nature, from feelings solemn and unearthly."

• DRAKE'S Shakspeare and his Times, vol. ii. p. 614 -616.

Of the descendents of Shakspeare there is not one remaining. Hamnet, his only son, died in childhood. His eldest daughter, Mrs. Hall, survived her father upwards of thirty years; and if the inscription of her tomb present us with a fair estimate of her talents and her virtues, she was the worthy child of Shakspeare.* She left one daughter only, who is mentioned in our poet's will, as his niece Elizabeth.' This lady was twice married; to Thomas Nashe, Esq. and afterwards to Sir John Barnard, of Abington, near Northampton, but had no issue by either husband. Judith, the other daughter of our poct, was the mother of several children; of which the eldest, with an honest pride in that maiden name, which her father's genius had rendered illustrious, was christened Shakspeare; out none of her offspring arrived at years of maturity.

purpose was answered, if his pieces were successful on the stage; and he was perfectly careless of the manner in which his most splendid productions were disfigured in surreptitious and defective editions, and his most exquisite passages rendered ridiculous by the blunders of ignorant transcribers. The plays that were printed in his life-time, with the exception of Titus Andronicus, had all issued from the press under circumstances the most injurious to the reputation of their author, without his revision or superintendence, and perhaps without his consent or knowledge; and when, eight years after his death, his friends Heminge and Condell undertook the collection and publication of his works, it is scarcely possible that the MSS. from which the edition was printed should have been the genuine MSS. of Shakspeare. Those had most probably perished in the fire that destroyed the Globe Theatre in 1613; and the first folio was made up from the playhouse copies, and deformed by all the omissions and the additions which had been adopted to suit the imperfections or the caprice of the several performers.—If Shakspeare still appears to us the first of poets, it is in spite of every possible disadvantage, to which his own sublime contempt of applause had exposed his fame, from the ignorance, the negli gence, the avarice, or the officiousness, of his early editors.+

It must strike every one as extraordinary, that the writings of a poet so distinguished should have been handed down to us in so corrupt and imperfect a state; and that so little should be known with any degree of certainty respecting the author of them. Shakspeare himself appears to have been entirely careless of literary fame. In his early works he was sufficiently cautious in superintending their progress through the press; and the Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece, and the Titus Andronicus, were presented to the public with as To these causes it is to be ascribed that the much typographical accuracy as any volumes of writings of Shakspeare have come down to us the time. He was at first not indifferent to in a state more imperfect than those of any celebrity as an author; but it was a mere youth-other author of his time, and requiring every ful vanity, and having attained the object of his ambition, and perceived its worthlessness, he afterwards only considered his genius and his improved skill in composition as the means of acquiring independence for his family, and securing an early retirement from the anxieties of public life. He wrote only for the theatre; his

• Here lyeth the body of Susanna, wife to John Hall, Gent. ye daughter of William Shakspeare, Gent She deceased the 11th of July, Ao. 1649, aged 66.'

Witty above her sexe, but that's not all,
Wise to salvation was good Mistriss Hall.
Something of Shakspeare was in that, but this
Wholly of him with whom she's now in blisse.
Then, passenger, hast ne're a teare,

To weepe with her that wept with all:
That wept, yet set herselfe to chere

Them up with comforts cordiall.
Her love shall live, her mercy spread,
When thou hast ne'er a teare to shed.'

'The foregoing English verses, which are preserved by Dugdale, are not now remaining, half of the tombstone having been cut away, and another half stone joined to it, with the following inscription on it:-" Here lyeth the body of Richard Watts, of Rybon-Clifford, in the parish of Old Stratford, Gent. who departed this life the 23d of May, Anno Dom. 1707, and in the 46th year of his age." This Mr. Watts, as I am informed by the Rev. Mr. Davenport, was owner of, and lived at, the estate of RyhonClifford, which was once the property of Dr. Hall.

exertion of critical skill to illustrate and amend them. That so little should be known with certainty of the history of his life, was the natural consequence of the events which immediately followed his dissolution. It is true, that the age in which he flourished was little curious about the lives of literary men: but our ignorance

'Mrs. Hall was buried on the 16th July, 1649, as appears from the register of Stratford.'-MALONE.

+ It may be perceived that many passages must have been corrupted beyond the reach of restoration, by comparing the following lines from Lear, which the ingenuity of the commentators has fortunately been able to set right, with the original text:

The untented woundings of a father's curse
Pierce every sense about thee!-Old fond eyes,
Raweep this cause again, I'll pluck you out,
And cast you, with the waters that you lose,
To temper clay.'

The first edition reads the first line correctly, and
continues,' that these hot tears, that break from me
perforce, should make the worst blasts and fogs
when the untender woundings of a father's curse,
peruse every sense about the old fond eyes, beweep
this cause again,' &c.

APPENDIX.

No. 1.

SHAKSPEARE'S WILL

FROM THE ORIGINAL

IN THE OFFICE OF THE PREROGATIVE COURT OF CANTERBURY