nesses of the scene; the latter, an industrious collector of facts, whose account is in part taken from Gascoyne's, and in part, undoubtedly, from local tradition. Between Gascoyne and Laneham there appear such slight discrepancies as might be expected in the independent accounts of persons writing from their individual impressions at the time or their recollections afterwards. Between them and Dugdale there is a similar variation. Shakespeare differs from them all, but in no greater degree than they

vary from each other. A comparison by juxtaposition of the

four descriptions will probably so harmonize the whole, as to convince the reader of the identity of the object of their several Thus:

accounts.

Shakespeare. "A MERMAID ON A DOLPHIN'S BACK."

Laneham. "Her Highnesse returning, cam thear, upon a swimming mermayd, Triton, Neptune's blaster," &c.

Gascoyne. "Triton, in the likenesse of a mermaide, came towards the Queene's Majestie as she passed over the bridge."

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Laneham (again). “ Arion, that excellent and famouz muzicien, in tyre and appointment straunge, ryding alofte upon hiz old freend the dolphin,” &c,

Gascoyne (again). " From thence her Majestie passing yet further on the bridge, Protheus appeared sitting on a dolphins back :" [the very words, as Mr Boaden observes, of Shakespeare.]

Dugdale. "Besides all this, he had upon the pool a Triton riding on a mermaid 18 foot long; as also Arion on a dolphin." a

From this collation it appears, that the impressions made on the eye-witnesses of the spectacle did not exactly correspond. The mythological figure that to Laneham appeared to be "Triton upon a swimming mermaid," to Gascoyne seemed to be "Triton in the likeness of a mermaid." Again; the group that Gascoyne thought to be "Protheus on a dolphin's back" was taken by Laneham and by Dugdale's informant for "Arion on the back of his old friend, the dolphin." Who can wonder, then, that to a more imaginative fancy, the group should present the idea of “a mermaid on a dolphin's back?" But to proceed:

a Antiquities of Warwickshire, i., 249.

Shakespeare. "Uttering SUCH DULCET AND HARMONIOUS BREATH.” Laneham. "Heerwith Arion, after a feaw well-coouched words unto her Majesty, beegan a delectabl ditty of a song well apted to a melodious noiz ; compounded of six severall instruments, al coovert, casting soound from the dolphin's belly within; Arion, the seaventh, sitting thus singing (az I say) without."

Gascoyne. "And the dolphyn was conveyed upon a boate, so that the owers seemed to be his fynnes. Within the which dolphyn, a consort of musicke was secretly placed; the which sounded; and Protheus, clearing his voyce, sang this song of congratulation," &c.

Dugdale. "Arion on a dolphin with rare musick.”

Here, too, we observe a similar discrepancy between the two eye-witnesses, touching the musician which sung upon the dolphin's back. Gascoyne supposed it to be Protheus; Laneham (and Dugdale's informant) thought it Arion. Laneham and Gascoyne were of the household of Leicester; if they could not agree what to make of this figure, "in its tyre and appointment straunge," surely the mere spectator may be pardoned for the mistake (if it were one) which transformed it into a mermaid. Master Hunnes was probably the only person who could have set them right. But we must again make way for the Poet.

Shakespeare. "THAT THE RUDE SEA GREW CIVIL AT HER SONG."

Laneham. "Mooving heerwith from the bridge, and fleeting more into the pool, chargeth he [Triton on his mermaid] in Neptune's name both Eolus with al his windez, the waters with hiz springs, biz fysh, and fooul, and all his clients in the same, that they ne be so hardye in any fors to stur, but keep them calm and quiet while this Queen be prezent.”

Gascoyne. "Triton, in the likenesse of a mermaide, came towards the Queene's Majestie as she passed over the bridge, and to her declared that Neptune had sent him to her Highnes,” (and here he makes a long speech, partly in prose, partly in verse, declaring the purport of his message :) "furthermore commanding both the waues to be calme, and the fishes to giue their attendance." "And herewith," adds Gascoyne, "Triton soundeth his trompe, and spake to the winds, waters, and fishes, as followeth :

You windes, returne into your caves, and silent there remaine;
You waters wilde, suppress your waves, and keep you calm and plaine ;

that here have any sway,

You fishes all, and each thing else,
I charge you all, in Neptune's name,

you keepe you at a stay.”

Here again we have the same slight variations which characterize the preceding parallels. In Laneham, it is "Triton, on a swimming Mermaid," that calms the waves; in Gascoyne, "Triton, in the likeness of a Mermaid ;" and in Shakespeare, the "Mermaid" herself.

We now come to the last particular of the pageant.

Shakespeare. "AND CERTAIN STARS SHOT MADLY FROM THEIR SPHERES, TO HEAR THE SEA-MAID'S MUSIC."

Laneham. "At last the Altitonant displaz me hiz mayn poour; with blaz of burning darts, flying too and fro, leamz of starz coruscant, streamz and hail of firie sparkes, lightninges of wildfier a-water and lond; flight and shoot of thunderboltz, all with such continuans, terror and vehemencie, that the heavins thundred, the waters scourged, the earth shooke."

Gascoyne. “There were fireworks shewed upon the water, the which were both strange and well-executed; as sometimes passing under water a long space, when all men thought they had been quenched, they would rise and mount out of the water againe, and burn very furiously untill they were entirely consumed.”

We have now perhaps sufficient evidence before us to identify the time and place of Oberon's Vision with the Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth. "Shakespeare's impression of the scene," as Mr. Boaden justly observes, "was strong and general; he does not write as if the tracts of Gascoyne and Laneham lay on his table. His description is exactly such as, after seventeen [?] years had elapsed, a reminiscence would suggest to a mind highly poetical.”

That Shakespeare was present at the festivities of Kenilworth is a pleasant conceit, started I believe by Doctor Percy," countenanced by Malone, adopted by Doctor Drake,* and, with due abatement for the rank of "the poor player," grown into

• Reliques of Eng. Poetry (1794), i., 143.

S

Inquiry into the Authenticity, &c. (1796), p. 150.

t Life and Times of Shakespeare (1817), i., 39.

favour with the public. Mr. Boaden" admits that he might have "ventured" into the courtly throng "under the wing of his townsman, Thomas Green, the player." Kenilworth, he adds, "was but fourteen miles distant from Stratford; and, as Shakespeare was then eleven years of age, he may have personally witnessed the reception of the Great Queen by her mighty favourite, and perhaps even discharged some youthful part in the pageant." But methinks there is something too aristocratic in this condescension; for, whilst our Poet's description of a part of the pageantry, as if from the memory of an eye-witness, gives fair ground for the conjecture of his presence at the scene, yet that—having parents of a rank and station entitling them to have taken their places there amongst the gentry of the neighbourhood, whether as invited guests or as welcome visiters-he should have gone "under the wing" of a poor player, strikes me as neither obvious, natural, nor necessary to the supposition. The received opinion of Shakespeare's condition in life is sadly distorted by the medium through which his history has reached Tradition is in general a compound of truth and error, but not unfrequently the caput-mortuum of a once living calumny. In our Poet's case, it appears to me that, although some of the slanders which persecuted his rising genius are at length substantially dead and buried, their spirit still haunts his memory, and detracts from our estimate of his birth and early associations. We do not now-a-days believe, indeed, that his first engagement in London was as a horse-boy, nor his first appearance on the stage as a candle-snuffer. We laugh at Aubrey's account of the butcher's son exercising the trade of his father, and killing a calf " in a high style;" nor do we treat with greater ceremony either Steevens's conjectural discovery of the young "Divinity shaping the ends" of pegs for woolsacks which the clumsier journeymen had "rough-hewn," or Malone's sagacious invention of the scrivener's apprentice ripening into the schoolmaster of attorneys' clerks. All those absurdities

us.

u Essay on the Sonnets of Shakespeare (1837), p. 8,

are happily exploded. But detraction is a devil that seldom quits possession without leaving behind him the smell of the pit; and the memory of Shakespeare has still to be relieved from the disrespect it has inherited as the residuary legacy of rival malice.

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Shakespeare was of gentle birth on both sides of the house. His father (though engaged in trade) had hereditary claims to the rank of a gentleman and to coat-armour-at least from the reign of Henry VII., by whom, " in reward of faithful and approved service," there were conferred upon his ancestor "lands and tenements in those parts of Warwickshire, where they have continued by some descents in good reputation and credit.”▾ He had himself filled the office of high bailiff-equivalent to that of mayor or sovereign-in the corporation of Stratford; was a justice of the peace, and, at that time, in prosperous circum

▾ Patent of Arms, copied from the original in the Heralds' Office. Malone's Shakespeare-Prolegomena. I cannot imagine why Malone should gratuitously labour to depreciate the Shakespeares, and transfer from them to the Ardens the foregoing description of their original settlement in Warwickshire. The words "some descents" imply a few, and are quite consistent with a line of ancestry which claimed an origin no more remote than the reign of Henry VII.; but surely they are not the terms in which heralds would speak of a family deriving its origin from Turchill de Arden, in the reign of William the Conqueror, and which could at that time shew an unbroken succession of eighteen generations, holding extensive property in the woodlands of Warwickshire, from whence they derived their name, and maintaining the family dignity by intermarriages with the best blood in that and the neighbouring counties. The objection that there is no record extant of any grant of lands to the Shakespeares by Henry VII. is of no value but to prove that, if existing, it escaped the research of the critic. But many documents that evaded his diligence have yielded themselves up to the good fortune of subsequent inquirers. This one may yet be found; but if not, the evidence of the Heralds' Office suffices to establish the assertion of such a grant by the Shakespeare family; and that is all we are concerned with. Of the first patent of arms taken out by John Shakespeare, in 1569, there is no trace to be found in the Office of Arms or elsewhere: yet the loss of that document, or of its record, does not disprove the fact that a patent of arms was then granted to our Poet's father.