Amongst them, it is a story almost still remembered in that country, that he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury: it happened, that in a pleasant conversation amongst their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakspere, in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph, if he happened to out-live 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 Shakspere gave him these four verses: Ten in the hundred lies here engrav'd, 'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd: Oh! oh! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe*. But *The Rev. Francis Peck, in his Memoirs of the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, 4to. 1740, p. 223. has introduced another epitaph imputed (on what authority is unknown) to Shakspere. It is on Tom-a-Combe, alias Thin-beard, brother to this John, who is mentioned by Mr. Rowe: "Thin in beard, and thick in purse; "He went to the grave with many a curse: The devil and he had both one nurse." STEEVENS. Ten But the sharpness of the satire is said to have Ten in the hundred lies here engrav’d— stung In The more the Merrier, containing Threescore and odde headlesse Epigrams, shot (like the Fooles bolts) amongst you, light where they will. By H. P. Gent. &c. 1698, I find likewise the following couplet, which is almost the same as the two beginning lines of Shakspere's Epitaph on John a Combe. Fæneratoris Epitaphium. EPIGRAM 24. "Ten in the hundred lies under this stone, I take the same opportunity to avow my disbelief that Shakspere was the author of Mr. Combe's Epitaph, or that it was written by any other person at the request of that gentleman. If Betterton the player did really visit Warwickshire for the sake of collecting anecdotes relative to our author, perhaps he was too easily satisfied with such as fell in his way, without making any rigid search into their authenticity. It appears also from a following copy of this inscription, that it was not ascribed to Shakspere so early as two years after his death. Mr. Reed of StapleInn obligingly pointed it out to me in the Remains, &c. of Richard Braithwaite, 1618; and, as his edition of our epitaph varies in some measure from the later one published by Mr. Rowe, I shall not hesitate to transcribe it: "Upon one John Combe of Stratford upon Avon, a notable Usurer, fastened upon a Tombe that he had caused to be built in his Life Time. "Ten stung the man so severely, that he never forgave it. "Ten in the hundred must lie in his grave, He "But a hundred to ten whether God will him have: "Oh (quoth the divell) my John a Combe." Here it may be observed that, strictly speaking, this is no jocular epitaph, but a malevolent prediction; and Braithwaite's copy is surely more to be depended on (being procured in or before the year 1618) than that delivered to Betterton or Rowe, almost a century afterwards. It has been already remarked, that two of the lines, said to have been produced on this occasion, were printed as an epigram in 1608, by H. P. Gent. and are likewise found in Cambden's Remains, 1614. I may add, that a usurer's solicitude to know what would be reported of him, when he was dead, is not a very probable circumstance; neither was Shakspere of a disposition to compose an invective, at once so bitter and uncharitable, during a pleasant conversation among the common friends of himself and a gentleman with whose family he lived in such friendship, that at his death he bequeathed his sword to Mr. Thomas Combe as a legacy. A miser's monument indeed, constructed during his lifetime, might be regarded as a challenge to satire ; and we cannot wonder that anonymous lampoons should have been affixed to the marble designed to convey the character of such a being to posterity. I hope I may excused for this attempt to vindicate Shakspere from the imputation of having poisoned the hour of confidence and festivity, by producing the severest of all censures on one be ef . He died in the 53d year of his age, and was buried on the north-side of the chancel, in the great church at of his company. I am unwilling, in short, to think he could so wantonly and so publickly have expressed his doubts concerning the salvation of one of his fellow STEEVENS. creatures. So in Camden's Remains, 1614 "Here lies ten in the hundred "In the ground fast ramm'd, 'Tis a hundred to ten "But his soul is damn'd." MALONE. Whether the epitaph on Combe was Shakspere's or not, it is not at present possible to determine; this however, which follows, is inserted, both because it hath been attributed to him, and also because Milton appears, from his epitaph on Shakspere, to have been no stranger to it. Epitaph on the tomb of Sir Thomas Stanley, knt. second son of Edward Earl of Derby; which was remaining on the north-side of the chancel of the church of Tong, in the county of Salop, in 1663, when Sir William Dugdale made the last visitation of that county; and which Sir William, in a marginal note, says, was written by William Shakspere the late famous tragedian : "Aske who lies here, but do not weepe; "This stony Register is for his Bones, "His Fame is more perpètuall than these Stones; |