by the Clopton family. Here in May 1742, when Mr. Garrick, Mr. Macklin, and Mr. Delane visited Stratford, they were hospitably entertained under Shakspeare's mulberry tree, by sir Hugh Clopton. He was a barrister at law, was knighted by king George I. and died in the 80th year of his age, in Dec. 1751. His executor, about the year 1752, sold New Place to the Rev. Mr. Gastrell, a man of large fortune, who resided in it but a few years, in consequence of a disagreement with the inhabitants of Stratford. As he resided part of the year at Lichfield, he thought he was assessed too highly in the monthly rate towards the maintenance of the poor, but being very properly compelled by the magistrates of Stratford to pay the whole of what was levied on him, on the principle that his house was occupied by his servants in his absence, he peevishly declared, that that house should never be assessed again; and soon afterwards pulled it down, sold the materials, and left the town. He had some time before cut down Shakspeare's mulberry tree, to save himself the trouble of shewing it to those whose admiration of our great poet led them to visit the classic ground on which it stood. That Shakspeare planted this tree appears to be sufficiently authenticated. Where New Place stood is now a garden. Before concluding this history, it may be necessary to mention that the poet's house was once honoured by the temporary residence of Henrietta Maria, queen to Charles I. Theobald has given an inaccurate account of this, as if she had been obliged to take refuge in Stratford from the rebels, which was not the case. She marched from Newark, June 16, 1643, and entered Stratford triumphantly, about the 23d of the same month, at the head of three thousand foot and one thousand five hundred horse, with one hundred and fifty waggons, and a train of artillery. Here she was met by prince Rupert, accompanied by a large body of troops. She resided about three weeks at our poet's house, which was then possessed by his grand daughter, Mrs. Nash, and her husband. During Shakspeare's abode in this house, his pleasurable wit, and good nature, says Mr. Rowe, engaged him the acquaintance and entitled him to the friendship of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Among these, Mr. Rowe tells a traditional story of a miser, or usurer, named Combe, who, in conversation with Shakspeare, said he fancied the poet intended to write his epitaph if he should survive him, and desired to know what he meant to say. On this Shakspeare gave him the following, probably extempore. "Ten in the hundred lies here ingrav❜d, "T is a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd. If any man ask, who lies in this tombe? 'Oh! ho!' quoth the Devil, 't is my John-a-Combe'." The sharpness of the satire is said to have stung the man so severely that he never forgave it. These lines, however, or some which nearly resemble them, appeared in various collections both before and after the time they were said to have been composed, 6 "As the curiosity of this house and tree brought much fame, and more company and profit to the town, a certain man, on some disgust, has pulled the house down, so as not to leave one stone upon another, and cut down the tree, and piled it as a stack of firewood, to the great vexation, loss, and disappointment of the inhabitants; however, an honest silversmith bought the whole stack of wood, and makes many odd things of this wood for the curious." Letter in Annual Register, 1760. Of Mr. Gastrell and his lady, see Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson, vol. ii. 490; iii. 443. C. and the inquiries of Mr. Steevens and Mr. Malone satisfactorily prove that the whole story is a fabrication. Betterton is said to have heard it when he visited Warwickshire on purpose to collect anecdotes of our poet, and probably thought it of too much importance to be nicely examined. We know not whether it be worth adding of a story which we have rejected, that a usurer in Shakspeare's time did not mean one who took exorbitant, but any interest or usance for money, and that ten in the hundred, or ten per cent. was then the ordinary interest of money. It is of more consequence, however, to record the opinion of Mr. Malone, that Shakspeare, during his retirement, wrote the play of Twelfth Night. He died on his birth-day, Tuesday, April 23, 1616, when he had exactly completed his fifty-second year', and was buried on the north side of the chancel, in the great church at Stratford, where a monument is placed in the wall, on which he is represented under an arch, in a sitting posture, a cushion spread before him, with a pen in his right hand, and his left rested on a scroll of paper. The following Latin distich is engraved under the cushion. Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, "The first syllable in Socratem," says Mr. Steevens," is here made short, which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we should read Sophoclem. Shakspeare is then appositely compared with a dramatic author among the ancients; but still it should be remembered that the eulogium is lessened while the metre is reformed; and it is well known that some of our early writers of Latin poetry were uncommonly negligent in their prosody, especially in proper names. The thought of this distich, as Mr. Tollet observes, might have been taken from The Faëry Queene of Spenser, b. ii. c. ix. st. 48, and c. x. st. 3. "To this Latin inscription on Shakspeare may be added the lines which are found underneath it on his monument: "Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast? Read, if thou canst, whom envious Death hath plac'd Within this monument; Shakspeare, with whom Obiit An° Dni. 1616. æt. 53, die 23 Apri. "It appears from the verses of Leonard Digges, that our author's monument was erected before the year 1623. It has been engraved by Vertue, and done in mezzotinto by Miller." On his grave-stone underneath are these lines, in an uncouth mixture of small and capital letters. The only notice we have of his person is from Aubrey, who says, "He was a handsome well-shaped man," and adds, "verie good company, and of a very ready, and pleasant and smooth witt." C. It is uncertain whether this request and imprecation were written by Shakspeare, or by one of his friends. They probably allude to the custom of removing skeletons after a certain time and depositing them in charnel-houses, and similar execrations are found in many ancient Latin epitaphs. We have no account of the malady which, at no very advanced age, closed the life and labours of this unrivalled and incomparable genius. His family consisted of two daughters, and a son named Hamnet, who died in 1596, in the twelfth year of his age. Susannah, the eldest daughter, and her father's favourite, was married to Dr. John Hall, a physician, who died Nov. 1635, aged 60. Mrs. Hall died July 11, 1649, aged 66. They left only one child, Elizabeth, born 1607-8, and married April 22, 1626, to Thomas Nash, esq. who died in 1647, and afterwards to sir John Barnard of Abington in Northamptonshire, but died without issue by either husband. Judith, Shakspeare's youngest daughter, was married to a Mr. Thomas Quiney, and died Feb. 1661-62 in her 77th year. By Mr. Quiney she had three sons, Shakspeare, Richard, and Thomas, who all died unmarried. Sir Hugh Clopton, who was born two years after the death of lady Barnard, which happened in 1669-70, related to Mr. Macklin, in 1742, an old tradition, that she had carried away with her from Stratford many of her grandfather's papers. On the death of sir John Barnard, Mr. Malone thinks, these must have fallen into the hands of Mr. Edward Bagley, lady Barnard's executor, and if any descendant of that gentleman be now living, in his custody they probably remain. To this account of Shakspeare's family, we have now to add, that among Oldys's papers is another traditional story of his having been the father of sir William Davenant. Oldys's relation is thus given. "If tradition may be trusted, Shakspeare often baited at the Crown Inn or Tavern in Oxford, in his journey to and from London. The landlady was a woman of great beauty and 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) was then a little school-boy 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's a good boy,' said the other, but have a care that you do n'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." This story appears to have originated with Anthony Wood, and it has been thought a presumption of its being true that, after careful examination, Mr. Thomas Warton was inclined to believe it. Mr. Steevens, however, treats it with the utmost contempt, but does not perhaps argue with his usual attention to experience when he brings sir William Davenant's "heavy, vulgar, unmeaning face" as a proof that he could not be Shakspeare's son. In the year 1741, a monument was erected to our poet in Westminster Abbey, by the direction of the earl of Burlington, Dr. Mead, Mr. Pope, and Mr. Martyn. It was the work of Scheemaker, (who received three hundred pounds for it) after a design of Kent, and was opened in January of that year. The performers of each of the London theatres gave a benefit to defray the expenses, and the dean and chapter of Westminster took nothing for the ground. The money received by the performance at Drury Lane theatre amounted to above two hundred pounds, but the receipts at Covent Garden did not exceed one hundred pounds." From these imperfect notices, which are all we have been able to collect from the labours of his biographers and commentators, our readers will perceive that less is known of Shakspeare than of almost any writer who has been considered as an object of laudable curiosity. Nothing could be more highly gratifying than an account of the early studies of this wonderful man, the progress of his pen, his moral and social qualities, his friendships, his failings, and whatever else constitutes personal history. But on all these topics his contemporaries and his immediate successors have been equally silent, and if aught can hereafter be discovered, it must be by exploring sources which have hitherto escaped the anxious researches of those who have devoted their whole lives, and their most vigorous talents, to revive his memory and illustrate his writings. In the sketch we have given, if the dates of his birth and death be excepted, what is there on which the reader can depend, or for which, if he contend eagerly, he may not be involved in controversy, and perplexed with contradictory opinions and authorities? It is usually said that the life of an author can be little else than a history of his works; but this opinion is liable to many exceptions. If an author, indeed, has passed his days in retirement, his life can afford little more variety than that of any other man who has lived in retirement; but if, as is generally the case with writers of great celebrity, he has acquired a pre-eminence over his contemporaries, if he has excited rival contentions, and defeated the attacks of criticism or of malignity, or if he has plunged into the controversies of his age, and performed the part either of a tyrant, or a hero in literature, his history may be rendered as interesting as that of any other public character. But whatever weight may be allowed to this remark, the decision will not be of much consequence in the case of Shakspeare. Unfortunately we know as little of the progress of his writings as of his personal history. The industry of his illustrators for the last thirty years has been such as probably never was surpassed in the annals of literary investigation, yet so far are we from information of the conclusive or satisfactory kind, that even the order in which his plays were written rests principally on conjecture, and of some plays usually printed among his works, it is not yet determined whether he wrote the whole, or any part. Much of our ignorance of every thing which it would be desirable to know respecting Shakspeare's works, must be imputed to the author himself. If we look merely at the state in which he left his productions, we should be apt to conclude, either that he was insensible of their value, or that while he was the greatest, he was at the same time the humblest writer the world ever produced; "that he thought his works unworthy of posterity, that he levied no ideal tribute upon future times, nor had any further prospect, than that of present popularity and present profit "." And such an opinion, although it apparently partakes of the ease and looseness of conjecture, may not be far from probability. But before we allow it any higher merit, or attempt to decide upon the affection or neglect with which he reviewed his labours, it may be necessary to consider their precise nature, and certain circumstances in his situation which affected them; and, above all, we must take into our account the character Dr. Johnson's preface. C. and predominant occupations of the times in which he lived, and of those which followed his decease. With respect to himself, it does not appear that he printed any one of his plays, and only eleven of them were printed in his lifetime. The reason assigned for this is, that he wrote them for a particular theatre, sold them to the managers when only an actor, reserved them in manuscript when himself a manager, and when he disposed of his property in the theatre, they were still preserved in manuscript to prevent their being acted by the rival houses. Copies of some of them appear to have been surreptitiously obtained, and published in a very incorrect state, but we may suppose that it was wiser in the author or managers to overlook this fraud, than to publish a correct edition, and so destroy the exclusive property they enjoyed. It is clear therefore that any publication of his plays by himself would have interfered, at first with his own interest, and afterwards with the interest of those to whom he had made over his share in them. But even had this obstacle been removed, we are not sure that he would have gained much by publication. If he had no other copies but those belonging to the theatre, the business of correction for the press must have been a toil which we are afraid the taste of the public at that time would have poorly rewarded. We know not the exact portion of fame he enjoyed; it was probably the highest which dramatic genius could confer, but dramatic genius was a new excellence, and not well understood. Its claims were probably not heard out of the jurisdiction of the master of the revels, certainly not beyond the metropolis. Yet such was Shakspeare's reputation that we are told his name was put to pieces which he never wrote, and that he felt himself too confident in popular favour to undeceive the public. This was singular resolution in a man who wrote so unequally, that at this day the test of internal evidence must be applied to his doubtful productions with the greatest caution. But still how far his character would have been elevated by an examination of his plays in the closet, in an age when the refinements of criticism were not understood, and the sympathies of taste were seldom felt, may admit of a question. "His language," says Dr. Johnson, "not being designed for the reader's desk, was all that he desired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience." Shakspeare died in 1616, and seven years afterwards appeared the first edition of his plays, published at the charges of four booksellers, a circumstance from which Mr. Malone infers," that no single publisher was at that time willing to risk his money on a complete collection of our author's plays." This edition was printed from the copies in the hands of his fellow-managers Heminge and Condell, which had been in a series of years frequently altered through convenience, caprice, or ignorance. Heminge and Condell had now retired from the stage, and, we may suppose, were guilty of no injury to their successors, in printing what their own interest only had formerly withheld. Of this, although we have no documents amounting to demonstration, we may be convinced, by adverting to a circumstance which will in our days appear very extraordinary, namely, the declension of Shakspeare's popularity. We have seen that the publication of his works was accounted a doubtful speculation, and it is yet more certain that so much had the public taste turned from him in quest of variety, that for several years after his death the plays of Fletcher were more frequently acted than his, and during the whole of the seventeenth century, they were made to give place to performances, the greater part of which cannot now be endured. During the same period only four editions of |