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fingers unconscious of soap or nailbrush, flakes of pie-crust, and stains of bacon and tallow candles. This accounts for its often mutilated and unsightly appearance. The usual deficiencies are the genuine title-page and portrait engraved by Martin Droeshout, with Ben Jonson's verses, which have been quoted until schoolboys know them by heart.

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Twenty of Shakespeare's plays were originally published separately in quarto during his life; dingy-looking little pamphlets, priced sixpence each. These play-books, nevertheless, raised the venom of Prynne, who in his Histriomastix," published in 1633, but written many years earlier, says:-"that they were more numerous than Bibles, and set forth in a costlier form." The early quartos are now aves rarissime, and seldom, indeed, met with. There are choice specimens of them, which belonged to King George the Third and Garrick, in the British Museum; Malone's are at the Bodleian, and John Kemble's, at Chatsworth. These collectors gave enormous sums for their rarities, which have been exceeded since. A perfect copy of "Richard III.," date 1594-the only one known-sold at Evans's, in 1825, for sixty-six guineas. John Kemble gave Mr. Stace £30 for "Romeo and Juliet," date, 1597. "Love's Labour Lost," 1598, brought at the sale of Rhodes's library, in 1825, £53 118. 8d.; and at Bindley's, £40 108. The "Merchant of Venice,' Henry 1600, has produced £52 10s. V.," 1600, £27 68.; "King Lear, 1608, £28; "Taming of a Shrew," 1594, £21; "Midsummer Night's Dream," 1600, imperfect, £25 108.; Merry Wives," 1602, £28; "Pericles," 1619, at Sotheby's, in 1826, £35; and "Othello," 1622, £42, and £29 88. These sums may frighten the uninitiated in bibliomania, who will lift up their hands in wonder at human enthusiasm or insanity.

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Robert Burton, our Democritus Junior, as he styles himself, read everything, and appears to have remembered all that he read. His book, "Anatomy of Melancholy," a very encyclopædia in itself, was first published in 1621-two years antecedent to the Shakespearean folio, and five years after the poet's death. Dr. Ferriar says it originally appeared

in 1617, but this is palpably a mistake. Burton was born in 1576, and died in 1640. He was, therefore, more directly a contemporary of Shakespeare than Fuller can be considered, and may have known him personally either in Oxford or London. His melancholy was like that of Jacques; "compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, a most humorous sadness.' Anthony Wood describes him thus :"I have heard some of the ancients of Christ Church often say, that his company was very merry, facete, and juvenile; and no one in his time did surpass him for his ready and dexterous interlarding his common discourses among them with verses from the poets, or sometimes from classic authors; which being then all the fashion in the University, made his company the more acceptable." From such a man, and in such a book, we are disappointed in finding only three allusions to, or quotations from, Shakespeare. Here they are, from the section on "Love-Melancholy."

1. "When Venus ran to meet her rosecheeked Adonis, as an elegant poet of ours sets her outThe bushes in the way,

Some catch her by the necke, some kiss her face,

Some twine about her legs to make her stay,

And all did covet her for to embrace." 2. "Who ever heard a story of more woe Than that of Juliet and her Romeo." 3. "And many times those which at first sight, cannot fancy or affect each other, but are harsh and ready to disagree, offended with each other's carriage, like Benedict and Betteris, in the comedy, begin at last to dote insensibly one upon another."

We might have expected comment, either disparaging, or laudatory, or critical, but we discover none.

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After Fuller, we find Shakespeare occasionally mentioned, and always with warm admiration, by Dugdale, Dryden, Phillips-author of Theatrum Poetarum"-Sir T. Blount, and Anthony Wood. Some trifling information also concerning him may be gleaned from the MSS. of Aubrey and Oldys. Rymer was the first who ventured on a vituperative tone, in a splenetic survey of "Othello," published in 1693, in a small volume in 12mo, bearing the title of "A Short

View of Tragedy, with some reflections on Shakespeare, and other Practitioners for the Stage." We are indebted to Aubrey for the tittletattle, not perpetuated by Rowe, that Shakespeare, in his early youth, was apprenticed to his father's trade of a butcher; and that when he knocked a bullock or a calf on the head, he did it in high style, indulging in a prefatory oration and a theatrical flourish. The tale will do to match with what Mr. William Guthrie, of Geographical Grammar celebrity, tells us in an essay upon English tragedy, published circa 1750, as a well-known tradition; namely, that Shakespeare shut himself up all night in Westminster Abbey when he wrote the scene of the ghost in "Hamlet." Both fables may parallel with the equally authentic but more appalling anecdote fathered upon Michael Angelo Caravaggio, that he poignarded a man to catch the agonies of death from a real subject when painting his "Crucifixion." The truth of the latter horror is not established, because Dr. Night-Thoughts Young wrote verses implying that he believed it. Is it not rather a modern application of the legend fastened on Parrhasius, who is said to have bought a very old man offered for sale amongst the Olynthian captives of Philip of Macedon, for the express purpose of putting him to death with protracted torture, the better to pourtray the passions of "Prometheus chained to the rock," in a picture on which he was then engaged.

A few years since, the writer of this notice happened to make an insignificant unit in a party, including some celebrities of note, who "assisted," as our French friends say, at a special spirit-rapping seance in the neighbourhood of London; on which occasion a leading medium of the day was expected to exhibit his most wonderful endowments. But, somehow or other, the spirits were refractory, and came not when they were called. There were none of the promised hands and arms dimly fluttering in the darkness-visible; grasping of knees under the table; nothing was elicited beyond a not very palpable motion of the heavy piece of furniture round which the expectant group sat in disappoint

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ment and silence. At last, when all began to exhibit symptoms of weariness, the medium proposed a resort to the alphabet, and the "beloved" spirits were respectfully invited to manifest themselves. The answer came, much after the mode in which an apology is made for the indisposition of a popular performer whose name is in the programme, and in these words duly conveyed by knocks: "We request to say, that to-night it is impossible." At supper, a gentleman sitting next to the professor asked, whether it had ever occurred to him or any of his gifted brethren, to rap up Shakespeare, and solicit him to clear surmises long in controversy. The reply was, "No; we have not yet got so far back. The spirits we can evoke at present are of more recent date." Since then, it has been written that Bacon and even Dante have come into the spiritual court, somewhere in America, when called. Further, we have seen a printed pamphlet, in which, on the authority of a clergyman, an official exorcist, it is stated, that even the Arch-Enemy was compelled to answer a summons and avow his identity. Surely, then, the chronological obstacle being thus levelled, an easy mode presents itself of solving many literary questions by the direct evidence which has hitherto eluded research. Here would be a permanent benefit conferred on advancing science, and a more satisfactory application of the assumed powers, than the bewilderment of elderly ladies of both sexes, by hoisting a medium to the ceiling in an armchair, without visible agency, floating him round on airy nothing, and lowering him again when the tour de jonglerie has run its course.

The numerous and meritorious biographers of Shakespeare, from Rowe down to Mr. Fullom, inclusive, have been unable to determine when he first began to develop his poetical genius. The earliest printed edition of "Venus and Adonis" bears the date of 1593, when the author was in his twenty-ninth year. There is a copy in the Malone collection at Oxford, for which he (Malone) gave £25. If offered for sale now, it would bring £100. But it may have been composed while the writer was yet a youth, and the publication delayed

until time and opportunity cohered favourably. He gave no striking specimens of precocious verse, as did Cowley and Pope; nor can we affirm of him as Pope sings of himself—

"He left no calling for his idle trade,
No duty broke, no father disobey'd;
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
He lisp'd in numbers for the numbers

came.

We incline to think that when Shakespeare began to write, he wrote for bread; that "necessity of present life," was his stimulating impulse; and that when the bread came, and the reputation along with it, he wrote more eagerly, quickly, and better, as men do when the aurum palpabile gives form and pressure to their literary aspirations. We know that Shakespeare made an imprudent love-match at little more than eighteen, with a rustic beauty seven or eight years older than himself. The disparity was little then, but it became more as time rolled on, and he still flourished, a handsome man of five-and-forty, while she, as was most probable, waned into a fading matron of fifty-three. But we do not know, and have no right to infer, that they lived unhappily, or grew tired of each other; or that the single bequest of the second best bed in Shakespeare's will is any indication of conjugal alienation, indifference, or contempt. This question has been so ably argued by Mr. Knight, Dr. Severn, and others, that it is needless to dwell further on it here. The existing laws secured a wife in a due share of her husband's property; and beds, first or secondbest, which were more costly in their furniture in the olden times than they are now, were often left as special tokens of regard. A more direct and convincing proof of matrimonial harmony may be drawn from the fact that Mrs. Shakespeare, who outlived her husband seven years, was, at her own desire, buried by his side.

Some prying archæologists, delving into the records of the Ecclesiastical Court, at Worcester, have unearthed the awkward fact that the license for William Shakespeare to marry Anne

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Hathaway was granted on the 28th of November, 1582, while the parish regis ter of the baptism of Susanna, their eldest child, is entered on the 26th of May, 1583; an untoward proximity of dates, which induces Lord Campbell to pronounce, with a bias of judicial severity, that the lady being so much older, was the seducer, and no better than she should be." The last term implies habitual levity, for which we have no warrant in evidence. The varium et mutabile semper femina of Virgil cannot justly be applied to the fair Anne of Shottery, against whom no charge of inconstancy has been alleged, and who, it is but fair to remember, was much more below her lover in intellect than she had the advantage of him in years. Her antimatrimonial lapse (assuming a certainly disputable hypothesis to be the only true one), was a perillous token of confidence not to be excused or recommended on grounds religious, moral, or political. It occurs, nevertheless, commonly enough, down to our own days, in the fashion of country wooing in that line of life, and often without unhappy results. The favoured swain is not likely to treasure it up as an after reproach when he merges into the husband. Shakespeare seems to have had his own case in memory when he thus suggests an apology for a supposititious one:--

"If you, in your own proof Have vanquish'd her resistanceYou'll say she did embrace me as a husband, And so extenuate the 'fore-hand sin."

That Shakespeare's family never resided permanently with him in London, where his line of business obliged him to pass so much of his own time, appears to be a settled point, as also that he visited them constantly and periodically before his retirement from active life, when he set up his staff of rest amongst them. In London, no doubt, he was sought after, and beset by many temptations. The Delilahs may have been numerous and seductive, but we have no reason to suppose that he was of a libertine turn, or a fast man upon town, although our mind and conscience misgive us that he may have

* Dr. Johnson, in the copy of the will, printed with his edition of 1765, says brown best bed.

made an occasional slip, and that there may have been a closer intimacy between him and comely Madam Davenant, of the Crown Inn at Oxford, than canon-law permits. We fear the anecdote is not altogether idle, which tells how a grave citizen of the town one day met young Will Davenant, the embryo laureate, running hastily along the street, and thus accosted him:-"Where are you hurrying to, my lad?" "To see my godfather, Shakespeare, who has just arrived." "A good boy, but be careful you are not taking God's name in vain."

We are to bear in mind, however, that Sir William is, himself, the relater of the anecdote, and was, with more tenderness for his muse than for his mother, specially desirous of establishing a natural as well as a spiritual relationship with his illustrious sponsor; and everybody knows too well how readily, in a gossiping town, a bit of local scandal, however idle, will embody itself in a jest, to treat this anecdote as evidence of more than the currency of such a story.

We also know that Shakespeare migrated from Stratford to London, either because some youthful frolic, induced by thoughtless associates, had made his native town too hot to hold him, or that the wolf growled too closely around his domestic hearth, or that prospects had opened, or that his innate convictions spurred him on to a wider sphere of action, and a more distinguished arena. The immediate cause is of less consequence than the effect. He became successively, actor, author, manager, and theatrical proprietor; and when fairly embarked in these avocations, his time and faculties must have been too completely absorbed to admit of episodial deviations. But when did this course commence, and until it commenced, what did he do? Here we wander in the mazes of conjecture, with no certain clue to follow, or compass to steer by.

We now pass to the inferential deductions drawn from the amazing perspicuity with which Shakespeare handles the technical terms peculiar to almost every subject of which he treats. Not Coke, or Grotius, or Puffendorff are more correct in their legal phraseology. He rivals Colum

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ella in his familiarity with agricultural nomenclature. He discourses of war with the practical science of Vegetius, Polyænus, or Folard. He is as much at home in the idioms of the quarter-deck, as if he had been ship-mate with Drake, Frobisher, or Hawkins. Mr. Malone, Mr. J. P. Collier, and Lord Chancellor Campbell decide that he acquired his legal lore in an attorney's office. Lord Campbell, in particular, holds that juridical phrases and forensic allusions, in the extent and propriety with which Shakespeare employs them, could only proceed from a person who had served a regular apprenticeship. "There is nothing," he says, so dangerous, as for one, not of the craft, to tamper with our free-masonry. In the House of Commons I have heard a county member who meant to intimate that he entirely concurred with the last preceding speaker, say, 'I join issue with the honourable gentleman who has just sat down;' the legal sense of which is, 'I flatly contradict all his facts, and deny his inferences.' Mr. S. W. Fullom, unless we entirely misapprehend his meaning, has fallen into the same misconception, at p. 94 of his late highly interesting "History of the Player and Poet," where he says, with reference to Lord Campbell's opinion, "None will dispute Shakespeare's law, when it is endorsed by a Lord Chancellor. But while joining issue on this point, we demur to the rule that this proficiency was acquired in a lawyer's office."

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Technicals are, in truth, delicate weapons to handle, and are not always happily wielded, even by those whose trade it is to use and understand them. The old general in "Roderick Random" backs out upon sheer ignorance when called upon to explain the meaning of an epaulement, a term ever in his mouth in connexion with a favourite exploit. He would expound the mystery practically, he said, when his majesty thought proper to give him the command of an army. We, ourselves, knew a military engineer- he was a Company's man, and not a king's officerwho, when he was asked what a Martello tower was, unhesitatingly described it as a wooden structure that went upon wheels.

Always building upon his free and correct application of technicals,

Shakespeare has been set down for many things which he certainly was not. Mr. Knight has no doubt that he was a practical farmer. Schlegel thinks he must have been a disciple of Esculapius, and that medical students may look upon his truthful delineations of the mental diseases, melancholy, delirium, lunacy, &c., as a catalogue of real cases. Mr. William J. Thoms is morally certain that he was a soldier, and saw actual service in a campaign in the Low Countries. The author of "Vonved the Dane" determines that his dramas afford internal evidence that a portion of his life was spent at sea. How much he was not sure, but a single year, he says, would be enough for such a genius as his to achieve that comprehensive familiarity with the marvels of ocean, that mastery over the seaman's vocabulary which his plays, the "Tempest," in particular, profusely evince. In a note on the opening scene of the "Tempest," Dr. Johnson says--"In this naval dialogue, perhaps the first example of sailor's language exhibited on the stage, there are, as I have been told by a skilful navigator, some inaccuracies and contradictory orders."

More than one commentator are of opinion that Shakespeare resided for some time in Edinburgh, with the company of players of which he was a member; but this rests on a mere conjecture, to which we may oppose the question, had it been so, would Shakespeare's comedies have failed to exhibit an effective reflection of Scottish character and dialect. Jamy, in Henry V., is no such portrait: it is unworthy of Shakespeare's hand, and the haste in which he is withdrawn indicates a sense of weakness and dissatisfaction in the poet. It shows however, his readiness, to use Scottish as freely as Welsh character, had he possessed equal knowledge and facility respecting it. Of course, after the accession of James, there would have been a reason for such forbearance. There was none, however, before it; and from the store-house of Shakespeare's shrewd and lively observation, making notes of all men's humours and eccentricities, and pressed upon constantly by an audience as exacting of variety as our own, it is nearly certain there would have issued a

"Laird" or a "Bailie" of those days, to set the Londoners on a roar, and to amuse after ages. Others, again, think that he made a tour on the Continent, and journeyed through France to Germany, Italy, Spain,

"To Nova Zembla, and the Lord knows where."

Dr. John Sherwin, M.D., in a voluminous MS. in 4to, preserved in the library of the Literary Institution of Bath, entitled, "Vindicatio Shakespeareana," delivers himself of a longcherished conviction that Shakespeare is to be powerfully illustrated by a knowledge of the Northern dialects. How, when, and where did he fall in the way of this acquisition; and how can we trace it in his works? We should as readily collect from thence that he was personally intimate with the vernacular of Llewellyn, Hoel, and Cadwallader.

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Some, too, have contended that Shakespeare followed Adam's trade, grounded on horticultural passages in the "Winter's Tale" and "Richard the Second." Some, also, that he was an apothecary, from his minute inventory of the starved man's shop, in "Romeo and Juliet." Why do they not enrol him as a master of the hounds, from the splendid description by Theseus of his pack, in “A Midsummer Night's Dream?" or as a horsedealer, from the consummate knowledge of equine anatomy, in "Venus and Adonis?" which no auctioneer in Tattersall's, no veterinary surgeon in the service could surpass, or, perhaps, compete with. It excites our wonder as often as we recur to the passage"Look, when a painter would surpass the life, In limning out a well-proportioned steed, His art with Nature's workmanship at strife,

As if the dead the living should exceed;

So did this horse excel a common one, In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.

"Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocksshag and long,

Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostrils wide,

High crest, short ears, legs straight, and passing strong,

Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide;

Look, what a horse should have he

did not lack,

Save a proud rider on so proud a back."

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