paper. The Latin distich, which is placed under the cushion, has been given us by Mr. Pope, or his graver, in this manner : INGENIO Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, I confess, I do not conceive the difference betwixt ingenio and genio in the first verse. They seem to me entirely synonymous terms; nor was the Pylian sage, Nestor, celebrated for his ingenuity, but for an experience and judgment owing to his long age. Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, has copied this distich with a distinction which Mr. Rowe has followed, and which certainly restores us the true meaning of the epitaph: JUDICIO Pylium, genio Socratem, &c. In The first syllable in Socratem is here made short, which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we should read Sophoclem. Shakspere is then appositely compared with a dramatick author among the ancients: but still it should be remembered that the elogium 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 Fairy Queene of Spenser, b. ii. c. 9. st. 48, and c. 10, st, 3. To In 1614, the greatest part of the town of Stratford was consumed by fire; but our Shakspere's house, among some others, escaped the flames. This house was first built by Sir Hugh Clopton, a younger brother of an ancient family in that neighbourhood, who took their name from the manor of Clopton. Sir Hugh was Sheriff of London in the reign of Richard III. and lord-mayor in the reign of king Henry VII. To this gentleman the town of Stratford is indebted for the fine stone-bridge, consisting of fourteen arches, which, at an extraordinary expence, he built over the Avon, To this Latin inscription on Shakspere should 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 Again, near the wall on which this monument is erected, is a plain free-stone, under which his body is buried, with another epitaph, expressed in the following uncouth mixture of small and capital letters: together with a causeway running at the west-end thereof; as also for rebuilding the chapel adjoining to his house, and the cross-aisle in the church there. It is remarkable of him, that, though he lived and died a bachelor, among the other extensive charities which he left both to the city of London and town of Stratford, he bequeathed considerable legacies for the marriage of poor maidens of good name and fame both in London and at Stratford. Notwithstanding which large donations in his life, and bequests at his death, as he had purchased the manor of Clopton, and all the estate of the family, so he left the same again to his elder brother's son with a very great addition (a proof how well beneficence and œconomy may walk hand in hand in wise families): good part of which estate is yet in the possession of Edward Clopton, esq. and Sir Hugh Clopton, knt. lineally descended from the elder brother of the first Sir Hugh, who particularly bequeathed to his nephew, by his will, his house, by the name of his Great House in Stratford. The estate had now been sold out of the Clopton family for above a century, at the time when Shakspere became the purchaser; who, having repaired and modelled it to his own mind, changed the name to New-Place, which the mansion-house, since erected upon the same spot, at this day retains. The house and lands, which attended it, continued in Shakspere's descendants to the time of the Restoration; when they were repurchased by the Clopton family, and the mansion now belongs to Sir Hugh Clopton, knt. To Dij the |