superciliously over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company; when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it, as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public. Jonson was certainly a very good scholar, and in that had the advantage of Shakspeare; though at the same time I believe it must be allowed, that what nature gave the latter was more than a balance for what books had given the former; and the judgment of a great man upon this occasion was, I think, very just and proper. In a conversation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William D'Avenant, Endymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eton, and Ben Jonson, Sir John Suckling, who was a professed admirer of Shakspeare, had undertaken his defence. against Ben Jonson with some warmth; Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, told them, That if Mr. Shakspeare had not read the ancients, he had likewise not stolen any thing from them; and that if he would produce any one topic finely treated by any one of them, he would undertake to shew something upon the same subject at least as well written by Shakspeare.

The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retire

ment, and the conversation of his friends. He had the good fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasion, and, in that, to his wish; and is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford. His pleasurable wit and good-nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship, of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. 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 Shakspeare, 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 Shakspeare gave him these four verses:

"Ten in the hundred lies here engraved;

""Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd:

"If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?

"Oh! ho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe."

But the sharpness of the satire is said to have stung

the man so severely, that he never forgave it.

and was

He died in the fifty-third year of his age, buried on the north side of the chancel, in the great

church at Stratford, where a monument is placed in the wall. On his grave-stone underneath is,

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear

"To dig the dust inclosed here.

"Blest be the man that spares these stones,
"And curst be he that moves my bones."

He had three daughters, of which two lived to be married; Judith, the elder, to one Mr. Thomas Quiney, by whom she had three sons, who all died without children; and Susanna, who was his favourite, to Dr. John Hall, a physician of good reputation in that country. She left one child only, a daughter, who was married first to Thomas Nashe, esq. and afterwards to Sir John Barnard of Abington, but died likewise without issue.

This is what I could learn of any note, either relating to himself or family: the character of the man is best seen in his writings. But since Ben Jonson has made a sort of an essay towards it in his Discoveries, I will give it in his words:

"I remember the players have often mentioned it "as an honour to Shakspeare, that in writing (what"soever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My "answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand! "which they thought a malevolent speech. I had "not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who "chose that circumstance to commend their friend

"by, wherein he most faulted: and to justify mine " own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour "his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. "He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that "facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should "be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said " of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; "would the rule of it had been so too! Many times "he fell into those things which could not escape "laughter; as when he said in the person of Cæsar, "one speaking to him,

"Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.

"He replied:

"Cæsar did never wrong, but with just cause.

"and such like, which were ridiculous. But he re"deemed his vices with his virtues: there was ever "more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."

As for the passage which he mentions out of Shakspeare, there is somewhat like it in Julius Cæsar, but without the absurdity; nor did I ever meet with it in any edition that I have seen, as quoted by Mr. Jonson.

Besides his plays in this edition, there are two or three ascribed to him by Mr. Langbaine, which I

have never seen, and know nothing of. He writ likewise Venus and Adonis, and Tarquin and Lucrece, in stanzas which have been printed in a late collec tion of poems. As to the character given of him by Ben Jonson, there is a good deal true in it: but I believe it may be as well expressed by what Horace says of the first Romans who wrote tragedy upon the Greek models, (or indeed translated them,) in his epistle to Augustus:

"Nam spirat tragicum satis, & feliciter audet,
"Sed turpem putat in chartis metuitque lituram."

As I have not proposed to myself to enter into a large and complete criticism upon Shakspeare's works, so I will only take the liberty, with all due submission to the judgment of others, to observe some of those things I have been pleased with in looking him over.

His plays are properly to be distinguished only into comedies and tragedies. Those which are called his stories, and even some of his comedies, are really tra gedies, with a run or mixture of comedy amongst them. That way of tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become so agreeable to the English taste, that though the severer critics among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences seem to be better pleased with it than with an exact tragedy. The Merry Wives of Windsor, The