violated, 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 pre. ceding inscriptions were more worthy, than they are, of the tomb to which they are attached. 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 preeminently intellectual mortal. But the cast, if taken, must have been taken immediately after his death; and we know neither at whose expense the monument was constructed; nor by whose hand it was executed; nor at what precise time it was erected. It may have been wrought by the artist, acting under the recollections of the Shakspeare family, into some likeness of the great townsman of Stratford: and on this probability, we may contemplate it with no inconsiderable interest. I cannot, however, persuade myself that the likeness could have been strong. The forehead, indeed, is sufficiently spacious and intellectual: 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 painted during his life; and it is certain that no portrait of him, with an incontestable 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.

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 man.

ners, 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 poetic palm. I have already cited Chettle: let me now cite Jonson, from whose pages much more of a similar nature might be adduced. "I loved," he says in his 'Discoveries,' "I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions," &c. &c. When Jonson apostrophizes his deceased friend, he calls him, "My gentle Shakspeare," and the title of" the sweet swan of Avon," so generally given to him, after the example of Jonson, by his contemporaries, seems to have been given with reference as much to the suavity of his temper as to the harmony of his verse. In their dedication of his works to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, his fellows, Heminge and Condell, profess that their great object in their publication was "only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakspeare:" and their preface to the public appears evidently to have been dictated by their personal and affectionate attachment to their departed friend. If we wish for any further evidence in the support of the moral character of Shakspeare, we may find it in the friendship of Southampton; we may extract it from the pages of his immortal works. Dr. Johnson, in his much over-praised Preface, seems to have taken a view, very different from ours, of the morality of our author's scenes. He says," His (Shakspeare's) first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience; and is so much more careful to please than to instruct that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings, indeed, a system of moral duty may be selected," (indeed!)

"but his precepts and axioms drop casually from him" (Would the preface-writer have wished the dramatist to give a connected treatise on ethics like the offices of Cicero?)" he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to show in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong; and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of the age cannot extenuate! for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place." Why this commonplace on justice should be compelled into the station in which we here most strangely find it, I cannot for my life conjecture. But absurd as it is made by its association in this place, it may not form an improper conclusion to a paragraph which means little, and which, intending censure, confers dramatic praise on a dramatic writer. It is evident, however, that Dr. Johnson, though he says that a system of moral duty may be selected from Shakspeare's writings, wished to inculcate that his scenes were not of a moral tendency. On this topic, the first and the greater Jonson seems to have entertained very different sentiments

"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-turned and true filed lines.'

We think, indeed, that his scenes are rich in sterling 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 Antony 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

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 22nd 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, her death terminated the lineal descendents of Shakspeare. His collateral kindred have been indulged with a much longer period of duration; the descendents 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, (1 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 perform. ance: 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*.

Whatever is any degree associated with the personal history of Shakspeare is weighty with general interest. The circumstance of his birth can impart consequence even to a provincial town; and we are not unconcerned in the past or the present 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 respects,

By intelligence, on the accuracy of which I can rely, and which has only just reached me, from the birthplace of Shakspeare, I learn that the family of the Harts, after a course of lineal descents during the revolution of two hundred and twentysix years, is now on the verge of extinction; an aged woman, who retains in single blessedness her maiden name of Hart, being at this time (Nov. 1825) its sole surviving representative. For some years she occupied the house of her ancestors, in which Shakspeare is reported to have first seen the light; and here she obtained a comfortable subsistence by showing the antiquities of the venerated mansion to the numerous strangers who were attracted to it. Being dispossessed of this residence by the rapaciousness of its proprietor, she settled herself in a dwelling nearly opposite to it. Here she still lives; and continues to exhibit some reliques, 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 said, with any of the vitality of genius. For this information I am indebted to Mr. Charles Fellows of Nottingham; who, with the characteristic kindness of his most estimable family, sought for the intelligence which was required by me, and obtained it.