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if we are to pin our faith on a short insulated paragraph in the diary of the Rev. J. Ward, published in 1839, was hastened or occasioned by a drinking bout with Ben Jonson and two or three old London chums, who visited him in his ease, not at his inn, but at his home in his native town, after his retirement. But this is quite as likely to be mere local gossip as trustworthy tradition. The respect able Vicar of Stratford wrote between February, 1661, and April, 1663, at least forty-five years after the poet's death. His diary bespeaks a commonplace mind, and a limited power of observation. The paragraph alluded to runs thus :- Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard; for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted." Assuredly no court of law would consider this sufficient evidence of the fact assumed. The inference implies, "potations pottle deep;" but although we have ample testimony to Shakespeare's genial and social habits, we have no more reason to think he was habitually a tippler, than that he was a teetotaller. In the absence of all direct knowledge of a man's acts and practice, it is fair to be guided by his thoughts and opinions as recorded in his own words. Would a wine-bibber write thus contemptuously on the folly of table excess? "Drunk; and speak parrot; and squabble, swagger, swear; and discourse fustian with one's own shadow! O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!" And again : "To be now a sensible man, by-and-by a fool, and presently a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil." And again : “A drunken man is like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman; one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and the third drowns him." And finally: "Great men should drink with harness on their throats."

In 1853, Mr. J. H. Fennell, an indefatigable Shakespearean, edited four numbers of what he calls "The Shakespeare Repository," containing many curious anecdotes and extracts. Amongst the latter are several from a posthumous publication, in his (Mr. F.'s) possession, of a work by Dr.

John Hall, who married Susanna, the poet's eldest, and judging by the terms of his will, favourite daughter. The title of the book is as follows:"Select Observations on English Bodies; or, cures both empericall and historicall, performed upon very eminent persons in desperate diseases. First written in Latine by Mr. John Hall, Physician, living at Stratfordupon-Avon, in Warwickshire, where he was very famous, and also in the counties adjacent, as appears by these observations, drawn out of severall hundreds of his, as choysest.-Now put into English for common benefit, by James Cooke, Practitioner in Physic and Chirurgery, London :Printed for John Sherley, at the Golden Pelican, in Little Britain, 1657."

We can fancy the delight of a true worshipper, on obtaining possession of this little volume, and the avidity with which he must have run over its pages in the hope of finding something to bear upon the circumstances connected with the last illness and death of the physician's illustrious father-in-law, as it can scarcely be doubted that he attended him then and at other times. And we can also picture to ourselves the disappointment produced by not finding the name of Shakespeare, or any allusion to him, in the one hundred and eighty-three medical cases selected as the most remarkable out of one thousand. The book, as it is, is curious, and certainly genuine. Had the omitted name been included in the list, it would have been a literary koh-i-noor, of inestimable value. It is fruitless now to inquire the why or wherefore of this omission. The recorded cases are all cures, which may account for Shakespeare's death not being alluded to. All physicians dwell with more complacency on the enumeration of the patients they carry through, than on that of those who exhale under their hands. It is difficult to persuade ourselves that Shakespeare never required medical aid until his fatal attack, no matter how suddenly that may have ended his earthly career; or that if he did, that he should have called in any one but his son-in-law, whose reputation stood so high, and with whom he lived on such good terms, that by his will, executed only one month before

his death, he left him joint executor and residuary legatee with his daughter Susanna.

Dr. John Hall outlived Shakespeare nineteen years and a-half, dying on the 25th of November, 1635, aged sixty. It was probably a malignant epidemic that carried him off, as he was buried in the chancel of Stratford church on the following day. His wife survived him fourteen years. She died July 11th, 1649, aged sixtysix; and her remains are deposited at the side of those of her husband. Shakespeare, it is well known, died on his birth-day, April 23rd (1616). So did Cromwell, on the 3rd of September (1658). So also did Raphael, and John Sobieski, the heroic King of Poland. It has been considered a remarkable coincidence that Napoleon and Wellington should both have been born in 1769; and that Robert Burns and James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who aped Burns with something of his humour and inspiration, both first saw the light on a 25th of January. But it is even more singular that the two greatest contemporary and dramatic poets of modern Europe Shakespeare and Cervantes should have died on the same day in the same year.

But the unsettled questions, recapitulated a page or two back. Ay, they are questions indeed, and is it not wonderful that they should be asked in this year of grace 1863, by one of his own countrymen, with reference to England's poetic idol, of whose plays one hundred and fifty editions have been printed, without counting translations into foreign tongues; and to whom, and his works, more than a thousand volumes have been devoted, combining every possible phase of biography, emendation, elucidation, and obfuscation; of expounding and confounding; of critical inquiry and amendments of text, arbitrary and authentic, probable and improbable, conjectural, æsthetical, ideographical, phonetical, and wildly fantastical? The succession seems as interminable as the shadowy line of Banquo's progeny, for even while we write, "the cry is still, they come." Two more tomes of "Shakespeare Commentaries" are threatened, by a Professor Gervinus, whose name we do not recollect to have met with before. The subject with all its ramifications

has supplied materials for a goodly library, which, collected together, would cause the heart of a thoroughgoing bibliomaniac to dance with joy, and his eyes to twinkle with ecstasy.

Many collections of "Ana" have been published in English and French. The practice dates back to the ancients; as, for example, Dicta Collectanea, or sayings of Julius Cæsar. But "Shakespeareana" exceeds them all in interest as in bulk. In 1827 and 1841, lists of his early quartos and collected editions, as also of illustrative books, pamphlets, and annotations were published by Mr. J. Wilson and Mr. J. O. Halliwell. Both are industriously compiled, valuable and instructive in their kind. Much information may also be drawn from Lowndes's "Bibliographer's Manual," the Prolegomena to the Variorum Edition, with the sale catalogues of Malone's, Stevens's, Isaac Reed's, Farmer's, Sabine's, Rhodes's, and Field's libraries; and above all, from the second part of that unparalleled congeries, the "Bibliotheca Heberiana. But none of these are sufficiently comprehensive, and a complete classified series, a catalogue raisonné, including original authorities consulted by Shakespeare, sources from whence he may have derived his plots, and various authors in poetry and prose, whose works he may have read or possessed, is still a bibliographical desideratum. The subject is rich and tempting to the ardent votary who rejoices in time and materials for its pursuit. Meantime the marvel increases that the questions even now repeated should have been put for more than two centuries, and have received as yet no conclusive answer. Doubts and darkness gather round as gleams of information flare up and evaporate. We know more of Plato and Socrates, of Horace and Virgil, than we can affirm with positive certainty of Shakespeare. He is as great a mystery as Homer, who has been called a myth, a man, and a multiple.

The bard of Avon has been lately dualized; for not many years since, a daring attempt was made to confound his dramatic identity with the person of Francis Bacon, Lord High Chancellor of England. This eminent sage and legist is commonly, but erroneously called, and by scholars who ought to know better, Lord Bacon-a title he

never bore or was recognised by. From Francis Bacon, Gentleman, he became successively Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, Baron Verulam, and Viscount Saint Albans.

In 1856, a pamphlet of fifteen pages appeared, addressed to the late Lord Ellesmere, by Mr. William Henry Smith, bearing the startling title of "Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare's Plays?" This was followed, in 1857, by a small volume in 12mo, by the same author, called "Bacon and Shakespeare." The first may be considered the overture, the latter the performance; the object of both being to prove that the "gentle" Shakespeare, of whom Ben Jonson, his dramatic contemporary and intimate associate, wrote, "I loved the man, on this side idolatry, as much as any," and to whom he yielded the palm, eulogizing him as "surpassing all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome sent forth," was a mere ordinary impostor, incapable of writing the plays he allowed to be called his; that the unfettered imagination, the boundless fancy which created Oberon and Titania, Puck, Ariel, and Caliban-which conceived the madness of Lear, the frenzied jealousy of Othello, the ambition and remorse of Macbeth, the unctuous wit of Falstaff, and the graceful melancholy of Hamlet, were contained and blended within the same philosophical, logical, and argumentative cerebrum, the same disciplined and severely scholastic store-house, the same magazine of legal analysis which digested and arranged the arguments on perpetuities and courts of equity, the "Novum Organum," the Sapientia Veterum," and the "De Augmentis Scientiarum." Speculation in its maddest flights never conceived antithesis so utterly irreconcilable as this.

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It is no disparagement to Shakespeare to parallel him with Bacon, who was also an intellectual giant, and whose wit, in a dry caustic vein, was equal to his power of analytical research. But could he have written the works we devoutly believe to have been Shakespeare's, in addition to his own, and all within a life which reached only to sixty-six years, and a great portion of which was exhausted

the most laborious and time-exing of all professions, not only

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would he have merited in their fullest extent the superlatives applied to him by Pope as the greatest" and "wisest" of mankind, but he must be pronounced in addition, in words which would then become his own, "Infinite in faculties-in apprehension like a God! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" Such a combination exists not within the analogies of nature, nor in the organized scheme of the master-hand which made every thing.

Another recent writer, quoted by the author of the Bacon and Shakespeare heresy, says, that Shakespeare had engaged some starving poet to supply him with plays to order, and thence draws this notable conclusion: "One thing at least is certain and not disputed; the plays apparently rise, if we may use the expression, as the series goes on; all at once Shakespeare leaves London, and the supply ceases. Is this compatible with such a genius thus culminating, on any other supposition than the death of the poet, and the survival of the employer?" Yes, we answer, on a much more simple one: that Shakespeare, having lived by the hard labour of his wits for many years, retired in the vigour of life to enjoy without further toil the independence he had achieved. Whether he intended at his leisure to revise and prepare his plays for publication, is a question on which we have no evidence, positive or negative. But, says Mr. W. H. Smith, "Lord Chancellor Bacon was disgraced in 1621, and immediately set himself to collect and revise his literary works. He died in 1626. In 1623, a folio of thirty-six plays, including some, and excluding others which had always been reputed Shakespeare's was published. Who but the author himself could have exercised this power of discrimination?"

A direct answer to and denial of this inference is contained in the preface of Shakespeare's professional associates and intimates, Heminge and Condell, who edited the first folio of 1623, and write thus in their address to the reader, proving beyond all doubt that their publication was made, as they assert, according to the "true originall copies." "It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthy to have bene wished, that the author himselfe had lived to have set forth,

and overseen his owne writings; but since it hath bin ordained otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his friends the office of their care and paine to have collected and published them and so to have published them, as where you were abused with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies,maimed and deformed by the fraudes and stealthes of injurious impostors, that exposed them: even those are now offered to your view cured and perfect of their limbs; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happie imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together; and what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who only gather his workes and give them you, to praise him. And there we hope, to your diverse capacities, you will find enough both to draw and hold you, for his art can no more be hid than it could be lost. Read him therefore, and again and again; and then if you do not like him, surelie you are in some manifest danger not to understand him."

If Shakespeare had been ajay, strutting in borrowed plumes, if he had allowed his name to be put to plays infinitely beyond what his own genius could have compassed, as he undoubtedly did to some incalculably below that lofty mark, and to which he could have given nothing beyond a few embellishing touches, he would have been found out by his contemporaries and companions. His intellectual mediocrity must have betrayed itself by social dulness or silence. He never could have been considered a wit amongst wits, or commemorated for brilliant powers, as we find distinctly stated by early panegyrists. He was the man he assumed to be, and such as his plays bespoke him. We have dwelt more on this question than it deserves, but that it should ever have been started is a curiosity of literature.

The following passage has frequently been referred to by commentators. It is an extract from an extremely scarce little tract, entitled "Palladis Tamia; Wit's Treasury, being the second part of Wit's Com

monwealth. By Francis Meres, Maister of Artes of both Universities; 12mo, London, 1598." This is the most specific and valuable evidence we possess of the estimation in which Shakespeare was held at that date, and of the chronological order of his plays, as far as the list extends: "As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare; witness his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece,' his sugred 'Sonnets' among his private friends, &c.-as Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona,' his Errors, his 'Love Labours Lost,' his 'Love Labours Wonne,' his Midsummer's Night Dreame,' and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard the II.,' 'Richard the III.,' 'Henry the IV.,' 'King John,' 'Titus Andronicus,' and his 'Romeo and Juliet.'

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As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speake with Plautus his tongue, if they would speake Latin, SO I say that the Muses would speake with Shakespeare's fine-filed phrase, if they would speake English.'

Let us take next what the quaint and loyal divine, Thomas Fuller, says, in his "Worthies of England,"published in 1662, after his death, though written long before. Fuller was born in 1608, only eight years previous to Shakespeare's exit, so that he can hardly be said to speak from personal knowledge, though some of his expressions may bear that construction. But he might often have conversed with those who were of Shakespeare's bosom council, and have thus collected his table-talk almost from the living source. Fuller's leading authority may have been Ben Jonson, who lived up to 1637, and associated with all the literary men of his day, especially after his appointment as Poet Laureate to James I. Fuller writes thus:

"William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in this county (Warwickshire), in whom three eminent poets may seem, in some sort, to be compounded. I. Martial, in the warlike sound of his surname,

whence some may conjecture him of a military extraction, Hasti vibrans, or Shakespeare. II. Ovid, the most natural and witty of all poets; and him it was that Queen Elizabeth, coming into a grammar school, made this extraordinary verse upon-Persius, a crabstaffe; baudie Martial; Ovid, a fine wag.' III. Plautus, who was an excellent comedian, yet never any scholar, as our Shakespeare, if alive, would confess himself. Add to all these that though his genius generally was jocular, and inclining him to festivity, yet he could, when so disposed, be solemn and serious, as appears by his tragedies; so that Heraclitus himself-I mean, if secret and unseen-might afford to smile at his comedies, they were so merry; and Democritus scarce forbear to sigh at his tragedies, they were so mournful. He was an eminent instance of the truth of the rule, Poeta not fit, sed nascitur-one is not made but born a poet. Indeed his learning was very little. So that, as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the earth, so nature herself was all the art that was used upon him. Many are the wit-combattes betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld, like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Maister Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn all tides, tacke about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention."

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Fuller, by the way, although a parson and grave historian, was an inveterate punster, and, withal, as fat as Falstaff; a conjunction of attributes which caused him sometimes to verify practically the truth of the adage, which says: "They who play at bowls must expect rubbers." Once attempting to play off a joke upon a gentleman named Sparrowhawk; What," said the Doctor, "is the difference between an owl and a sparrowhawk?" "The owl," replied the other, "is fuller in the head, fuller in the body, and fuller all over."

The price of the first folio of Shakespeare's collected works, 1623, was £1, equal to about £4 at our present

rate of currency. The amount of the impression was 250; of which nearly one hundred are supposed to be still forthcoming. In 1848, the late Mr. Thomas Rodd had nearly completed a collected list, in which above eighty were identified; twenty-five of which are in public libraries. The Soane Museum, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, has the four folios of 1623, 1632, 1665, and 1685, which belonged to John Kemble. They are also at Althorp, and were in Bishop Butler's library, at Shrewsbury. Capell's of 1623, is at Trinity College, Cambridge; and Malone's in the Bodleian at Oxford. The British Museum has the four first folios-Steevens's, King George the Third's-a poor copy; the Reverend Mordaunt Cracherode's, and the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville's. The last, said to be the finest in existence, cost that extensive and munificent collector, £121 168.; a large sum for a single volume without illustrations. But what is this to the price of the Valdarfer Boccaccio of 1471, for which the late Duke of Marlborough gave £2,260, in 1812, at the Duke of Roxburgh's sale. In 1851, the newspapers informed us that a first folio Shakespeare, belonging to the Right Hon. C. Wynne, produced £146. And in 1860, a similar paragraph stated that there was then a copy floating in the market, matchless in condition, for which £336 was asked. Mr. R. P. Gillies, who wrote "Memoirs of a Literary Veteran," in 1851, tells of yet another exemplar, rooted out from the lumbered shelves of an old Laird of Bonnymune, which sold for the enormous sum of £500, “flanked,” however, "by the second and third editions." What has since become of this costly investment? Who has seen it, and what happy living collector holds it in his keeping?

All to whom this section of our subject is interesting will find a long and interesting note entirely devoted to the history of the first Shakespearean folio in Dr. Dibdin's "Library Companion;" and to that we refer them. The book is not attractive in appearance, abounds in the grossest typographical blunders, and is printed in a coarse style, on inferior paper. It commonly lay on hall or kitchen tables in old country mansions, with Fox's "Martyrs," and Baker's "Chronicle," exposed to the contact of

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