WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

With a privilege, rarely indulged even to the sons | make them worse, are said to have been written of genius, he had produced his admirable works after Combe's death. Steevens and Malone diswithout any throes or labour of the mind: they had credit the whole tale. The two first lines, as given obtained for him all that he had asked from them, to us by Rowe, are unquestionably not Shak-the patronage of the great, the applause of the speare's; and that any lasting enmity subsisted witty, and a competency of fortune adequate to between these two burghers of Stratford is disprothe moderation of his desires. Having fulfilled, or, ved by the respective wills of the parties, John possibly, exceeded his expectations, they had dis- Combe bequeathing five pounds to our Poet, and charged their duty; and he threw them altogether our Poet leaving his sword to John Combe's nefrom his thought; and whether it were their des- phew and residuary legatee, John Combe himself tiny to emerge into renown, or to perish in the being at that time deceased. With the two.comdrawer of a manager; to be brought to light in a mentators above mentioned, I am inclined, therefore, state of integrity, or to revisit the glimpses of the on the whole, to reject the story as a fabrication; moon with a thousand mortal murders on their head, though I cannot, with Steevens, convict the lines of engaged no part of his solicitude or interest. They malignity; or think, with him and with Malone, that had given to him the means of easy life, and he the character of Shakspeare, on the supposition of This insensi- his being their author, could require any laboured sought from them nothing more. bility in our Author to the offspring of his brain vindication to clear it from stain. In the anecdote, may be the subject of our wonder or admira- as related by Rowe, I can see nothing but a whimtion: but its consequences have been calamitous sical sally, breaking from the mind of one friend, to those who in after times have hung with delight and of a nature to excite a good-humoured smile on over his pages. On the intellect and the temper of the cheek of the other. In Aubrey's hands, the these ill-fated mortals it has inflicted a heavy load transaction assumes a somewhat darker comof punishment in the dullness and the arrogance of plexion; and the worse verses, as written after the commentators and illustrators-in the conceit and death of their subject, may justly be branded as petulance of Theobald; the imbecility of Capell; malevolent, and as discovering enmity in the heart the pert and tasteless dogmatism of Steevens; the of their writer. But I have dwelt too long upon a ponderous littleness of Malone and of Drake. Some topic which, in truth, is undeserving of a syllable; superior men, it is true, have enlisted themselves and if I were to linger on it any longer, for the purpose in the cause of Shakspeare. Rowe, Pope, War- of exhibiting Malone's reasons for his preference of burton, Hanmer, and Johnson have successively Aubrey's copy of the epitaph to Rowe's, and his been his editors; and have professed to give his discovery of the propriety and beauty of the single scenes in their original purity to the world. But Ho in the last line of Aubrey's, as Ho is the abbrefrom some cause or other, which it is not our pre-viation of Hobgoblin, one of the names of Robin sent business to explore, each of these editors, in Good-fellow, the fairy servant of Oberon, my readhis turn, has disappointed the just expectations of ers would have just cause to complain of me, as the public; and, with an inversion of Nature's sporting with their time and their patience. general rule, the little men have finally prevailed against the great. The blockheads have hooted the wits from the field; and, attaching themselves to the mighty body of Shakspeare, like barnacles to the hull of a proud man of war, they are prepared to With his various powers of pleasing; his wit and plough with him the vast ocean of time; and thus, by the only means in their power, to snatch them- his humour; the gentleness of his manners; the flow selves from that oblivion to which Nature had devo- of his spirits and his fancy; the variety of anected them. It would be unjust, however, to defraud dote with which his mind must have been stored; these gentlemen of their proper praise. They have his knowledge of the world, and his intimacy read for men of talents; and, by their gross labour with man, in every gradation of the society, from in the mine, they have accumulated materials to the prompter of a playhouse to the peer and the be arranged and polished by the hand of the finer sovereign, Shakspeare must have been a delightful artist. Some apology may be necessary for this-nay, a fascinating companion; and his acquainshort digression from the more immediate subject tance must necessarily have been courted by all of my biography. But the three or four years, the prime inhabitants of Stratford and its vicinity. which were passed by Shakspeare in the peaceful retirement of New Place are not distinguished by any traditionary anecdote deserving of our record; and the chasm may not improperly be supplied with whatever stands in contiguity with it. I should pass in silence, as too trifling for notice, the story of our Poet's extempore and jocular epitaph on John Combe, a rich townsman of Stratford, and a noted money-lender, if my readers would not object to me that I had omitted an anecdote which had been honoured with a place in every preceding biography of my author. As the circumstance is refated by Rowe, "In a pleasant conversation among their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakspeare, in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph if he happened to outlive him: and, since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately upon which Shakspeare gave him

But the sharpness of the satire is said to have stung
the man so severely that he never forgave it." By
ubrey the story is differently told; and the lines
Mquestion, with some alterations, which evidently

But over this, as over the preceding periods of his life, brood silence and oblivion; and in our total ignorance of his intimacies and friendships, we must apply to our imagination to furnish out his convivial board where intellect presided, and delight, with admiration, gave the applause.

On the 2d of February, 1615-16, he married his youngest daughter, Judith, then in the thirtyfirst year of her age, to Thomas Quiney, a vintner in Stratford; and on the 25th of the succeeding month he executed his will. He was then, as it would appear, in the full vigour and enjoyment of life; and we are not informed that his constitution had been previously weakened by the attack of any malady. But his days, or rather his hours, were now all numbered; for he breathed his last on the 23d of the ensuing April, on that anniversary of his birth which completed his fifty-second year. It would be gratifying to our curiosity to know something of the disease, which thus prematurely terminated the life of this illustrious man: but the secret is withheld from us; and it would be idle to endeavour to obtain it. We may be certain that Dr. Hall, who was a physician of considerable eminence, attended his father-in-law in his last illness; and Dr. Hall kept a register of all the remarkable cases, with their symptoms and treatment, which in the course of his practice had fallen under his observation. This curious MS., which had escaped the enmity of time, was obtained by Malone: but the recorded cases in

it most unfortunately began with the year 1617; whose expense the monument was constructed, and the preceding part of the register, which most nor by whose hand it was executed; nor at what probably had been in existence, could no where be precise time it was erected. It may have been found. The mortal complaint, therefore, of William wrought by the artist, acting under the recollections Shakspeare is likely to remain for ever unknown; of the Shakspeare family into some likeness of the and as darkness had closed upon his path through great townsman of Stratford; and on this probalife, so darkness now gathered round his bed of bility, we may contemplate it with no inconsidedeath, awfully to cover it from the eyes of succeed-rable interest. I cannot, however, persuade mying generations. self that the likeness could have been strong. The forehead, indeed, is sufficiently spacious and intel lectual: but there is a disproportionate length in the under part of the face: the mouth is weak; and the whole countenance is heavy and inert. Not having seen the monument itself, I can speak of it only from its numerous copies by the graver; and by these it is possible that I may be deceived. But if we cannot rely on the Stratford bust for a resemblance of our immortal dramatist, where are we to look with any hope of finding a trace of his features? It is highly probable that no portrait of him was painthim, with an incontestible claim to genuineness, is at present in existence. The fairest title to authenticity seems to be assignable to that which is called the Chandos portrait; and is now in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham, at Stowe. The possession of this picture can be distinctly traced up to Betterton and Davenant. Through the hands of successive purchasers, it became the property of Mr. Robert Keck. On the marriage of the heiress of the Keck family, it passed to Mr. Nicholl, of Colney-Hatch, in Middlesex: on the union of this gentleman's daughter with the Duke of Chandos, it found a place in that nobleman's collection; and, finally, by the marriage of the present Duke of Buckingham with the Lady Anne Elizabeth Brydges, the heiress of the house of Chandos, it has settled in the gallery of Stowe. This was pronounced by the late Earl of Orford, (Horace Walpole,) as we are informed by Mr. Granger, to be the only origi nal picture of Shakspeare. But two others, if not more, contend with it for the palm of originality; one, which in consequence of its having been in the possession of Mr. Felton, of Drayton, in the county of Salop, from whom it was purchased by the Boydells, has been called the Felton Shakspeare; and one, a miniature, which, by some connection, as I believe, with the family of its proprietors, found its way into the cabinet of the late Sir James Lamb, more generally, perhaps, known by his original name of James Bland Burgess. The first of these pictures was reported to have been found at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, one of the favourite haunts, as it was erroneously called, of Shakspeare and his companions; and the second by a tradition, in the family of Somervile the poet, is affirmed to have been drawn from Shakspeare, who sate for it at the presand the flat stone, covering the grave, holds out, in sing instance of a Somervile, one of his most intivery irregular characters, a supplication to the read-mate friends. But the genuineness of neither of er, with the promise of a blessing and the menace of a curse:

On the 25th of April, 1616, two days after his decease, he was buried in the chancel of the church of Stratford; and at some period within the seven subsequent years, (for in 1623 it is noticed in the verses of Leonard Digges,) a monument was raised to his memory either by the respect of his townsmen, or by the piety of his relations. It represents the Poet with a countenance of thought, resting on a cushion and in the act of writing. It is placed under an arch, between two Corinthian columns of black marble, the capitals and bases of which are gilt. The face is said, but, as far as I can find, noted during his life; and it is certain that no portrait of on any adequate authority, to have been modelled from the face of the deceased; and the whole was painted, to bring the imitation nearer to nature. The face and the hands wore the carnation of life the eyes were light hazel: the hair and beard were auburn a black gown, without sleeves, hung loosely over a scarlet doublet. The cushion in its upper part was green: in its lower, crimson; and the tassels were of gold colour. This certainly was not in the high classical taste; though we may learn from Pausanias that statues in Greece were sometimes coloured after life; but as it was the work of contemporary hands, and was intended, by those who knew the Poet, to convey to posterity some resemblance of his lineaments and dress, it was a monument of rare value; and the tastelessness of Malone, who caused all its tints to be obliterated with a daubing of white lead, cannot be sufficiently ridiculed and condemned. Its material is a species of free-stone; and as the chisel of the sculptor was most probably under the guidance of Doctor Hall, it bore some promise of likeness to the mighty dead. Immediately below the cushion is the following distich :

Judicio Pylium; genio Socratem; arte Maronem

Terra tegit; populus maret; Olympus habet.

On a tablet underneath are inscribed these lines:-
Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast?

Read, if thou can'st, whom envious death has placed
Within this monument-Shakspeare; with whom
Quick Nature died; 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:

Good Friend! for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust inclosed here.

Blest be the man that spares these stones;
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

The last of these inscriptions may have been written by Shakspeare himself under the apprehension of his bones being tumbled, with those of many of his townsmen, into the charnel-house of the parish. But his dust has continued unviolated, and is likely to remain in its holy repose till the last awful scene of our perishable globe. It were to be wished that the two preceding inscriptions were more worthy, than they are, of the tomb to which they are at tached. It would be gratifying if we could give any faith to the tradition, which asserts that the bust of this monument was sculptured from a cast moulded on the face of the departed poet; for then we might assure ourselves that we possess one authentic resemblance of this pre-eminently intellectual mortal. But the cast, if taken, must have been taken immediately after his death; and we know neither at

these pictures can be supported under a rigid investigation; and their pretensions must yield to those of another rival portrait of our Poet, which was once in the possession of Mr. Jennens, of Gopsal in Leicestershire, and is now the property of that liberal and literary nobleman, the Duke of Somerset. For the authenticity of this portrait, attributed to the pencil of Cornelius Jansenn, Mr. Boaden* contends with much zeal and ingenuity. Knowing that some of the family of Lord Southampton, Shakspeare's especial friend and patron, had been painted by Jansenn, Mr. Boaden speciously infers that, at the Earl's request, his favourite dramatist had, likewise, allowed his face to this painter's imitation; and that the Gopsal portrait, the result of the artist's skill on this occasion, had obtained a distinguished place in the picture-gallery of the noble Earl. This, however, is only unsupported assertion, and the mere idleness of conjec ture. It is not pretended to be ascertained that the Gopsal portrait was ever in the possession of Shak

An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Pictures and Prints offered as Portraits of Shakspeare, p. 67-50

speare's illustrious friend; and its transfers, during | poetic palm. I have already cited Chettle: let me the hundred and thirty-seven years, which inter- now cite Jonson, from whose pages much more of posed between the death of Southampton, in 1624, a similar nature might be adduced. "I loved," he and the time of its emerging from darkness at Gop- says in his Discoveries, "I loved the man, and do sal, in 1761, are not made the subjects even of a honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much random guess. On such evidence, therefore, if as any. He was, indeed, honest, of an open and evidence it can be called, it is impossible for us to free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions receive, with Mr. Boaden, the Gopsal picture as a and gentle expressions," &c. &c. When Jonson genuine portrait of Shakspeare. We are now as- apostrophizes his deceased friend, he calls him, sured that it was from the Chandos portrait Sir "My gentle Shakspeare," and the title of "the Godfrey Kneller copied the painting which he pre- sweet swan of Avon," so generally given to him, sented to Dryden, a poet inferior only to him whose after the example of Jonson, by his contemporaries, portrait constituted the gift. The beautiful verses, seems to have been given with reference as much with which the poet requited the kind attention of to the suavity of his temper as to the harmony of the painter, are very generally known: but many his verse. In their dedication of his works to the may require to be informed that the present, made Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, his fellows, on this occasion by the great master of the pen- Heminge and Condell, profess that their great obcil to the greater master of the pen, is still inject in their publication was "only to keep the existence, preserved no doubt by the respect felt to memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as be due to the united names of Kneller, Dryden, was our Shakspeare:" and their preface to the and Shakspeare; and is now in the collection of public appears evidently to have been dictated by Earl Fitzwilliam at Wentworth Castle.* The ori- their personal and affectionate attachment to ther ginal painting, from which Droeshout drew the copy departed friend. If we wish for any further evifor his engraving, prefixed to the first folio edition dence in the support of the moral character of of our Poet's dramas, has not yet been discovered; Shakspeare, we may find it in the friendship of Southand I feel persuaded that no original painting ever ampton; we may extract it from the pages of his existed for his imitation; but that the artist worked immortal works. Dr. Johnson, in his much overin this instance from his own recollection, assisted praised Preface, seems to have taken a view, very probably by the suggestions of the Poet's theatric different from ours, of the morality of our author's friends. We are, indeed, strongly of opinion that scenes. He says, "His (Shakspeare's) first defect Shakspeare, remarkable, as he seems to have been, is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in for a lowly estimate of himself, and for a carelessness books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to conveof all personal distinction, would not readily submit nience; and is so much more careful to please than his face to be a painter's study, to the loss of hours, to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral which he might more usefully or more pleasurably purpose. From his writings, indeed, a system of assign to reading, to composition, or to conviviality. moral duty may be selected," (indeed!) "but his If any sketch of his features was made during his precepts and axioms drop casually from him:" life, it was most probably taken by some rapid and (Would the preface-writer have wished the dramaunprofessional pencil, when the Poet was unaware tist to give a connected treatise on ethics like the of it; or, taken by surprise, and exposed by it to offices of Cicero ?) "he makes no just distribution no inconvenience, was not disposed to resist it. of good or evil, nor is always careful to show in We are convinced that no authentic portrait of this the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked: he great man has yet been produced, or is likely to be carries his persons indifferently through right and discovered; and that we must not therefore hope wrong; and at the close dismisses them without to be gratified with any thing which we can contem- further care, and leaves their examples to operate plate with confidence as a faithful representation of by chance. This fault the barbarity of the age canhis countenance. The head of the statue, executed not extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to by Scheemaker, and erected, in 1741, to the honour make the world better, and justice is a virtue indeof our poet in Westminster Abbey, was sculptured pendent on time or place." Why this commonplace after a mezzotinto, scraped by Simon nearly twenty on justice should be compelled into the station in years before, and said to be copied from an origi- which we here most strangely find it, I cannot for nal portrait, by Zoust. But as this artist was not my life conjecture. But absurd as it is made by its known by any of his productions in England till association in this place, it may not form an im the year 1657, no original portrait of Shakspeare proper conclusion to a paragraph which means little, could be drawn by his pencil; and, consequently, and which, intending censure, confers dramatic the marble chiselled by Scheemaker, under the praise on a dramatic writer. It is evident, however, direction of Lord Burlington, Pope, and Mead, that Dr. Johnson, though he says that a system of cannot lay any claim to an authorized resemblance moral duty may be selected from Shakspeare's to the man, for whom it was wrought. We must writings, wished to inculcate that his scenes were be satisfied, therefore, with knowing, on the au- not of a moral tendency. On this topic, the first thority of Aubrey, that our Poet "was a handsome, and the greater Jonson seems to have entertained well-shaped man;" and our imagination must sup- very different sentimentsply the expansion of his forehead, the sparkle and flash of his eyes, the sense and good-temper playing round his mouth; the intellectuality and the benevolence mantling over his whole countenance.

It is well that we are better acquainted with the rectitude of his morals, than with the symmetry of his features. To the integrity of his heart; the gentleness and benignity of his manners, we have the positive testimony of Chettle and Ben Jonson; the former of whom seems to have been drawn, by our Poet's good and amiable qualities, from the faction of his dramatic enemies; and the latter, in his love and admiration of the man, to have lost all his natural jealousy of the successful competitor for the

I derive my knowledge on this topic from Malone; for till I saw the fact asserted in his page, I was not aware that the picture in question had been preserved amid the wreck of poor Dryden's property. On the authority also of Malone and of Mr. Boaden, I speak of Sir Godfrey's present to Dryden as of a copy from the, Chandos portrait.

"Look, how the father's face (says this great man)

Lives in his issue; even so the race

Of Shakspeare's mind and manners, brightly shines
In his well-torned and truefiled lines."

We think, indeed, that his scenes are rich in ster ling morality, and that they must have been the effusions of a moral mind. The only crimination. of his morals must be drawn from a few of his sonnets; and from a story first suggested by Anthony Wood, and afterwards told by Oldys on the authority of Betterton and Pope. From the Sonnets* we can collect nothing more than that their writer was blindly attached to an unprincipled woman, who preferred a young and beautiful friend of his to him self. But the story told by Oldys presents some

* See Son 141, 144, 147, 151, 152

16

to think, with the writer "On Shakspeare and his
Times," that these familiar and fervent addresses
were made to the proud and the lofty Southampton.
Neither can I persuade myself, with Malone, that
the friend and the mistress are the mere creatures
of our Poet's imagination, raised for the sport of
his muse, and without "a local habitation or a
They were, unquestionably, realities: but
name."
who they were must for ever remain buried in in-
scrutable mystery. That those addressed to his
male friend are not open to the infamous interpre-
tation, affixed to them by the monthly critic, may
be proved, as I persuade myself, to demonstration.
The odious vice to which we allude, was always in
England held in merited detestation; and would
our Poet consent to be the publisher of his own
shame ? to become a sort of outcast from society?
to be made

thing to us of a more tangible nature; and as it | the Roman poet, into a man, as I would be induced possesses some intrinsic merit as a story, and rests, as to its principal facts, on the authority of Wood, who was a native of Oxford and a veracious man, we shall not hesitate, after the example of most of the recent biographers of our Poet, to relate it, and in the very words of Oldys. "If tradition may be trusted, Shakspeare often baited at the Crown Inn or Tavern in Oxford, on his journey to and from London. The landlady was a beautiful woman and of a sprightly wit; and her husband, Mr. John Davenant, (afterwards mayor of that city,) a grave, melancholy man, who, as well as his wife, used much to delight in Shakspeare's pleasant company. Their son, young Will Davenant (afterwards Sir William Davenant) was then a little schoolboy, in the town, of about seven or eight years old; and so fond also of Shakspeare that, whenever he heard of his arrival, he would fly from school to see him. One day, an old townsman, observing the boy running homeward almost out of breath, asked him whither he was posting in that heat and hurry. He answered, to see his god-father, Shakspeare. There is a good boy, said the other; but have a care that you don't take God's name in vain! This story Mr. Pope told me at the Earl of Oxford's table, upon occasion of some discourse which arose about Shakspeare's monument, then newly erected in Westminster Abbey."

"A fixed figure for the hand of time

To point his slow, unmoving finger at ?" If the sonnets in question were not actually publishwhence they ed by him, he refrained to guard them from manupress; script distribution; and they soon, as might be exwere rapidly circulated, to the honour of his poetry pected, found their way to the and not to the discredit of his morals. So pure for the first time, in the nineteenth century, that he On these two instances of his frailty, under the was he from the disgusting vice, imputed to him, influence of the tender passion, one of them sup- alludes to it only once (if my recollection be at all ported by his own evidence, and one resting on auwhere the foul-mouthed Thersites, in Troilus and thority which seems to be not justly questionable, accurate) in all his voluminous works; and that is depend all the charges which can be brought against Cressida,* calls Patroclus "Achilles's masculine the strict personal morality of Shakspeare. In these whore."' Under all the circumstances of the case, days of peculiarly sensitive virtue, he would not possibly be admitted into the party of the saints: therefore, that these sonnets should be the effusions but, in the age in which he lived, these errors of his of sexual love is incredible, inconceivable, impossihuman weakness did not diminish the respect, com-ble; and we must turn away from the injurious The Will of Shakspeare, giving to his youngest manded by the probity of his heart; or the love, suggestion with honest abhorrence and disdain. conciliated by the benignity of his manners; or the admiration exacted by the triumph of his genius. I daughter, Judith, not more than three hundred valuable, as it is called by the testator, "My broad blush with indignation when I relate that an offence, pounds, and a piece of plate, which probably was of a much more foul and atrocious nature, has been silver and gilt bowl," assigns almost the whole of his suggested against him by a critic of the present her husband; whom he appoints to be his executors. day, on the pretended testimony of a large number property to his eldest daughter, Susanna Hall, and of his sonnets. But his own proud character, which The cause of this evident partiality in the father raised him high in the estimation of his contemporaries, sufficiently vindicates him from this abomi- appears to be discoverable in the higher mental acnable imputation. It is admitted that one hundred complishments of the elder daughter; who is reand twenty of these little poems are addressed to a ported to have resembled him in her intellectual male, and that in the language of many of them endowments, and to have been eminently distinlove is too strongly and warmly identified with guished by the piety and the Christian benevolenco friendship. But in the days of Shakspeare love and which actuated her conduct. Having survived her friendship were almost synonymous terms. In the estimable husband fourteen years, she died on the Merchant of Venice,† Lorenzo speaking of Antonio 11th of July, 1649; and the inscription on her tomb, preserved by Dugdale, commemorates her intellecto Portia, says, tual superiority, and the influence of religion upon her heart. This inscription, which we shall transcribe, bears witness also, as we must observe, to the piety of her illustrious father.

"But if you knew to whom you show this honour,
How true a gentleman you send relief to ;
How dear a lover of my lord, your husband," &c.

Witty above her sex; but that's not all:
Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.
Something of Shakspeare was in that; but this
Wholly of him, with whom she's now in bliss
Then, passenger, hast ne'er a tear

To weep with her, that wept with all?
That wept, yet set herself to cheer

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

and Portia, in her reply calls Antonio "the bosom lover
of her lord." Drayton, in a letter to his friend,
Drummond of Hawthornden, tells him that Mr. Jo
seph Davies is in love with him; and Ben Jonson
concludes a letter to Dr. Donne by professing him-
self as ever his true lover. Many more instances of the
same perverted language might be educed from the
writings of that gross and indelicate age; and I
have not a doubt that Shakspeare, without exposing
himself to the hazard of suspicion, employed this
authorized dialect of his time to give the greater As Shakspeare's last will and testament will be
glow to these addresses to his young friend. But
who was this young friend? The question has fre-
quently been asked; and never once been even
speciously answered. I would as readily believe,
with the late Mr. G. Chalmers, that this object of
our author's poetic ardour, was Queen Elizabeth,
changed for the particular purpose, like the Iphis of

*See Monthly Review for Dec. 1824: article, Skot-
towe's Life of Shakspeare.
† Act iii. sc. 4

printed at the end of this biography, we may refer our readers to that document for all the minor legacies which it bequeaths; and may pass immediately to an account of our great Poet's family, as far as it can be given from records which are authentic. Judith, his younger daughter, bore to her husband, Thomas Quiney, three sons; Shakspeare, who died in his infancy, Richard and Thomas, who deceased, the first in his 21st year, the last in his 19th,

* Act v sc. 1.

unmarried and before their mother; who, having |

Whatever is in any degree associated with the reached her 77th year, expired in February, 1661-2 personal history of Shakspeare is weighty with gen-being buried on the 9th of that month. She ap-eral interest. The circumstance of his birth can pears either not to have received any education, or impart consequence even to a provincial town; and not to have profited by the lessons of her teachers, we are not unconcerned in the past or the present for to a deed, still in existence, she affixes her

mark.

We have already mentioned the dates of the birth, marriage, and death of Susanna Hall. She left only one daughter, Elizabeth, who was baptized on the 21st of February, 1607-8, eight years before her grandfather's decease, and was married on the 22d of April, 1626, to Mr. Thomas Nash, a country gentleman, as it appears, of independent fortune. Two years after the death of Mr. Nash, who was buried on the 5th of April, 1647, she married on the 5th of June, 1649, at Billesley in Warwickshire, Sir John Barnard, Knight, of Abington, a small village in the vicinity of Northampton. She died, and was buried at Abington, on the 17th of February, 1669-70; and, as she left no issue by either of her husbands, ner death terminated the lineal descendants of Shakspeare. His collateral kindred have been indulged with a much longer period of duration; the descendants of his sister, Joan, having continued in a regular succession of generations even to our days; whilst none of them, with a single exception, have broken from that rank in the community in which their ancestors, William Hart and Joan Shakspeare united their unostentatious fortunes in the year 1599. The single exception to which we allude is that of Charles Hart, believed, for good reasons, to be the son of William the eldest son of William and Joan Hart, and, consequently, the grand-nephew of our Poet. At the early age of seventeen, Charles Hart, as lieutenant in Prince Rupert's regiment, fought at the battle of Edgehill: and, subsequently betaking himself to the stage, he became the most renowned tragic actor of his time. "What Mr. Hart delivers," says Rymer, (I adopt the citation from the page of Malone,) "every one takes upon content: their eyes are prepossessed and charmed by his action before aught of the poet's can approach their ears; and to the most wretched of characters he gives a lustre and brilliancy, which dazzles the sight that the deformities in the poetry cannot be perceived." "Were I a poet," (says another contemporary writer,) "nay a Fletcher or a Shakspeare, I would quit my own title to immortality so that one actor might never die. This I may modestly say of him (nor is it my particular opinion, but the sense of all mankind) that the best tragedies on the English stage have received their lustre from Mr. Hart's performance: that he has left such an impression behind him, that no less than the interval of an age can make them appear again with half their majesty from any second hand." This was a brilliant eruption from the family of Shakspeare; but as it was the first so it appears to have been the last; and the Harts have ever since, as far at least as it is known to us, "pursued the noiseless tenor of their way," within the precincts of their native town on the banks of the soft-flowing Avon.*

fortunes of the place, over which hovers the glory of his name. But the house, in which he passed the last three or four years of his life, and in which he terminated his mortal labours, is still more engaging to our imaginations, as it is more closely and personally connected with him. Its history, therefore, must not be omitted by us; and if in some re spects, we should differ in it from the narrative of Malone, we shall not be without reasons sufficient to justify the deviations in which we indulge. New Place, then, which was not thus first named by Shakspeare, was built in the reign of Henry VII., by Sir Hugh Clopton, Kt., the younger son of an old family resident near Stratford, who had filled in succession the offices of Sheriff and of Lord Mayor of London. In 1563 it was sold by one of the Clopton family to William Bott; and by him it was again sold in 1570 to William Underhill, (the purchaser and the seller being both of the rank of esquires) from whom it was bought by our Poet in 1597. By him it was bequeathed to his daughter, Susanna Hall; from whom it descended to her only child, Lady Barnard. In the June of 1643, this Lady, with her first husband Mr. Nash, entertained, for nearly three weeks, at New Place, Henrietta Maria, the queen of Charles I., when, escorted by Prince Rupert and a large body of troops, she was on her progress to meet her royal consort, and to proceed with him to Oxford. On the death of Lady Barnard without children, New Place was sold, in 1675,† to Sir Edward Walker, Kt., Garter King at Arms; by whom it was left to his only child, Barbara, married to Sir John Clopton, Kt., of Clopton in the parish of Stratford. On his demise, it became the property of a younger son of his, Sir Hugh Clopton, Kt., (this family of the Cloptons seems to have been peculiarly prolific in the breed of knights,) by whom it was repaired and decorated at a very large expense. Malone affirms that it was pulled down by him, and its place supplied by a more sumptuous edifice. If this statement were correct, the crime of its subsequent destroyer would be greatly extenu ated; and the hand which had wielded the axo against the hallowed mulberry tree, would be absolved from the second act, imputed to it, of sacrilegious violence. But Malone's acccount is, unquestionably, erroneous. In the May of 1742, Sir Hugh entertained Garrick, Macklin, and Delany under the shade of the Shakspearian mulberry. On the demise of Sir Hugh in the December of 1751, New Place was sold by his son-in-law and executor, Henry Talbot, the Lord Chancellor Talbot's brother, to the Rev. Francis Gastrell, Vicar of Frodsham in Cheshire; by whom, on some quarrel with the magistrates on the subject of the parochial assessments, it was razed to the ground, and its site abandoned to vacancy. On this completion of his outrages against the memory of Shakspeare, which his unlucky possession of wealth enabled him to By intelligence, on the accuracy of which I can rely, said, with any of the vitality of genius. For this inforand which has only just reached me, from the birth-mation I am indebted to Mr. Charles Fellows, of Notplace of Shakspeare, I learn that the family of the Harts, tingham; who with the characteristic kindness of his after a course of lineal descents during the revolu- most estimable family, sought for the intelligence which tion of two hundred and twenty-six years, is now on the was required by me, and obtained it. verge of extinction; an aged woman, who retains in Malone gives a different account of some of the single blessedness her maiden name of Hart, being at transfers of New Place. According to him, it passed by this time (Nov. 1825) its sole surviving representative. sale, on the death of Lady Barnard, to Edward Nash, For some years she occupied the house of her ancestors, the cousin-german of that Lady's first husband; and, in which Shakspeare is reported to have first seen the by him, was bequeathed to his daughter Mary, the wife Jight; and here she obtained a comfortable subsistence of Sir Reginald Foster; from whom it was bought by by showing the antiquities of the venerated mansion to Sir John Clopton, who gave it by deed to his youngest the numerous strangers who were attracted to it. Being son, Sir Hugh. But the deed, which conveyed New dispossessed of this residence by the rapaciousness of its Place to Sir Edward Walker, is still in existence; and proprietor, she settled herself in a dwelling nearly oppo-has been published by R. B. Wheeler, the historian of site to it. Here she still lives; and continues to exhibit Stratford. some relics, not reputed to be genuine, of the mighty bard, with whom her maternal ancestor was nourished in the same womb. She regards herself also as a dramatic poet; and, in support of her pretensions, she produces the rude sketch of a play, uninformed, as it is

Sir Hugh Clopton was knighted by George I He was a barrister at law; and died in the December of 1751, at the advanced age of eighty.-Malone.

§ Our days, also, have witnessed a similar profana tion of the relics of genius; not, indeed, of genius