valiant warrior. Tasso would have been well placed in the brilliant band who followed Renaud. Lope and Calderon bore arms. Ercilla was at once the Homer and the Achilles of his day. Cervantes and Camoens showed the glorious scars of courage and misfortune. The style of these soldier-poets has often the same elevation which marked their careers. Το Shakspeare's lot fell a widely different one. is impassioned in his works, but rarely noble; dignity is sometimes wanting in his style, as it was in his life.

He

VOL. I.

X

THE LIFE OF SHAKSPEARE.

AND what was that life? How much is known of it? Very little! He to whom it belonged concealed it, and cared but little either for his works or his days. If we study the private sentiments of Shakspeare in his pages, the painter of so many dark pictures would appear to have been a wayward man, referring every thing to his own existence; it is true that he found abundant occupation in so vast an inward life. The poet's father, probably a Catholic, once a justice of peace, and alderman of Stratford, became a woolstapler and a butcher. William, the eldest of ten children, worked at his father's trade. I have already said that he who held the dagger of Melpomene bled calves before he killed tyrants, and addressed pathetic harangues to the spectators of the unjust death dealt to these innocent beasts. Shakspeare, in his youth, attacked beneath an apple-tree, which still re

mains celebrated, a party of tipplers of Bidford, and pelted them with ale jugs. At eighteen he married the daughter of a farmer, Anne Hathaway. his elder by seven years, by whom he had a girl, then twins, male and female. This fruitfulness neither steadied nor even much affected

him. He so soon and so thoroughly forgot Mistress Anne, that he only remembered her in order to interline in his will the before-mentioned legacy of "his second best bed."

A poaching adventure drove him from his native town. Taken in the fact, in the park of Sir Thomas Lucy, he appeared before the offended party, on whom he revenged himself by placarding his door with a satirical ballad. The rancour of Shakspeare was lasting for, from Sir Thomas Lucy he drew Justice Shallow, in the second part of Henry the Fourth, and overwhelmed him with the buffooneries of Falstaff. The displeasure of Sir Thomas having obliged Shakspeare to quit Stratford, he went to seek his fortune in London.

Poverty pursued him thither. Reduced to hold gentlemen's horses at the theatre doors, he disciplined a troop of intelligent servants, who took the name of Shakspeare's boys." From the doors of the theatres, gliding behind the scenes, he held the place of call-boy. Green,

his kinsman, an actor of Black Friars, thrust him from the wings to the stage, and from actor he rose to author. Criticisms and pamphlets were published against him, to which he made no reply. He acted the part of Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet, and that of the Ghost of Hamlet, in an appalling manner. It is known that he tilted his wit against that of Ben Jonson, at the Syren Club, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh. Of the rest of his theatrical career we are ignorant; it is only marked by the master-pieces which dropped twice or thrice a year from his genius-" bis pomis utilis arbos-” and of which he took no care. He did not even affix his name to these performances, while he permitted that great name to be inserted in a catalogue of forgotten comedians (entre-parleurs, as such were then called, persons who spoke dialogue on the stage), in pieces still more completely forgotten. He did not give himself the trouble either to collect or to print his dramas. Posterity, which never came into his memory, exhumed them from their ancient repositories, as one digs up the remains of a statue of Phidias, from among the obscure images of Olympian athletæ.

Dante unceremoniously classed himself with the great poets:

Vidi quattro grand ombre a me venire,

Tasso spoke of his immortality as well as others. Shakspeare said nothing of his person, his family, his wife, his son, who died at the age of twelve years, his two daughters, his country, his works, his glory. Whether he was unconscious of his genius, or whether he disdained it, he appears not to have believed that it would be remembered. Hamlet says:

"Oh heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? then there is hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year, but by'r Lady! he must build churches then, or else shall he suffer not thinking on!"

Shakspeare abruptly left the theatre at fifty, in the plenitude of his success and his genius. Without seeking extraordinary causes for this retreat, it is probable that the careless actor quitted the stage as soon as he had secured a small independence. The world persists in judging the character of a man by the nature of his talents, and the nature of his talents by the character of the man; but the man and his talents are sometimes very disproportioned to each other, without ceasing to be homogeneous. Which was the real self-Shakspeare the tragic