In a work by Francis Meres, entitled Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, being the Second Part of Wits Commonwealth, 1598, is a remarkable passage concerning Shakespeare and the productions by which at that date he had established his fame: "As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c. "As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best "Verses by Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, occasioned by the motto to the Globe Theatre,-Totus mundus agit histrionem. Jonson. If but stage-actors all the world displays, Shakespeare. Little or much of what we see we do; We are all both actors and spectators too." From Poetical Characteristicks,—a Ms. formerly in the Harleian collection. "Mr. Ben Johnson and Mr. Wm. Shakespeare being merrye att a tavern, Mr. Jonson haveing begune this for his epitaph, Here lies Ben Johnson, That was once one, he gives ytt to Mr. Shakspear to make upp, who presently wrightes, Who, while hee liv'de, was a sloe thinge, And now, being dead, is no-thinge." Ms. Ashmol. Oxon. 38, p. 181.— The letter from Peele to Marlowe, concerning Shakespeare and Jonson, which has been given in several publications, is undoubtedly a forgery: see Life of Peele, p. 327, prefixed to his Works, ed. Dyce, 1861. for comedy and tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labors Lost, his Love Labours Wonne, his Midsummers Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard the 2., Richard the 3., Henry the 4., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. "As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speake with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin, so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeares fine filed phrase, if they would speake English." Of the various pieces thus mentioned by Meres in 1598, a portion only were then in print: the others afterwards found their way to the press at unequal intervals, some remaining in manuscript till the publication of the folio in 1623. To take them in the order of his enumeration. Venus and Adonis and Lucrece first appeared (as already stated), the former in 1593, the latter in 1594; the Sonnets in 1609; The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors in 1623; Love's Labour's lost in 1598; Love's Labour's won (supposing that title to be, as it most probably is, only another name for All's well that ends well) in 1623; A Midsummer-Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice in 1600; King Richard the Second and King Richard the Third in 1597; The First Part of King Henry the Fourth in 1598; The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth in 1600; King John in 1623; Titus Andronicus (if not in 159424) in 1600; Romeo and Juliet (with a most imperfect text) in 1597. Among the Epigrams of Weever, published in 1599, but written earlier, are the following wretched lines in commendation of our author's poetry both narrative and dramatic; "Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare. "Honie-tongd Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue, I swore Apollo got them, and none other; Some heaven-born goddesse said to be their mother: Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to love her; Proud lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her; Their sugred tongues and power-attractive beauty During the same year appeared a small poetical miscellany called The Passionate Pilgrim, the title-page attributing the whole to Shakespeare,25 though it con 24 "This play," says Langbaine, was first printed 4° Lond. 1594." Account of Eng. Dramatic Poets, p. 464: and, though no such edition is at present known, Langbaine's statement is probably correct; for Titus Andronicus was entered in the Stationers' Registers, Feb. 6th, 1593. 25 That Shakespeare did not authorize the publication of The Passionate Pilgrim is certain.-No second edition of it is known.-To the third edition, 1612, the publisher, W. Jaggard, added two pieces from Heywood's Troja Britannica; which proceeding was thus noticed by Heywood in the Postscript to his Apology for Actors, also printed in 1612: "Here, likewise, I must necessarily insert a manifest injury done me in that worke [Troja Britannica] by taking the two epistles of Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris, and printing them in a lesse volume under tains some things that we know he did not write, and some others which their poverty of thought and expression forbids our believing to be his. As to those portions of it which had been printed the year before among the poems of Barnfield, a recent inquiry26 would seem to show that they may nevertheless be from Shakespeare's pen.-In 1599 was also published the second edition of his Romeo and Juliet, "newly corrected, augmented, and amended." Of the marriage of Shakespeare's sister Joan to William Hart, a hatter at Stratford, the register has no mention but their first child, William, was baptized August 28th, 1600, buried March 29th, 1639.27-Their other children were: Mary, baptized June 5th, 1603, buried Dec. 17th, 1607; Thomas, baptized July 24th, the name of another, which may put the world in opinion I might steale them from him, and hee, to doe himselfe right, hath since published them in his owne name: but, as I must acknowledge my lines not worthy his patronage under whom he hath publisht them, so the author, I know, much offended with M. Jaggard that (altogether unknowne to him) presumed to make so bold with his name." Heywood having thus claimed his own, Jaggard cancelled the title-page of the third edition of The Passionate Pilgrim, 1612, on which was the name of Shakespeare, and substituted a title-page without any author's name. 26 By Mr. Collier: see his papers in The Athenæum for May 17th, 1856, and in Notes and Queries, Second Series, vol. ii. 8. After a minute examination of the two editions of Barnfield's volume, 1598 and 1605, he states that in the second edition, 1605, Barnfield omitted the pieces which had been printed in 1599 as Shakespeare's. The pieces in question are the Sonnet, "If music and sweet poetry agree," &c. and the Ode, "As it fell upon a day," &c.: and they form part of the fourth division ("Poems in diuers humors") of Barnfield's work, which was originally entitled The Encomion of Lady Pecunia; or the Praise of Money, &c. 27 See p. 89. 1605; Michael, baptized Sept. 23d, 1608.-In 1600,28 besides the plays already mentioned,29 our author's Much ado about Nothing and his King Henry the Fifth (a mere abortion of the original) found their way to the press. John Shakespeare, the father of the dramatist, about whom so much has been said in the commencement of this memoir, was buried at Stratford, Sept. 8th, 1601.30 28 The first part of the true and honorable history of the life of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham, was printed in 1600, with "Written by William Shakespeare" on the title-page. Copies, however, exist, which are without any author's name; and we may conclude that the original title-page had been cancelled. That Shakespeare was not concerned in the composition of this play is certain: it was, as we learn from Henslowe's Diary, the joint production of Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathway. The London Prodigall, 1605, and A Yorkshire Tragedie, 1608, both having Shakespeare's name on the title-page; The Lamentable Tragedie of Locrine, newly set foorth, overseene and corrected, By W. S., 1595; The True Chronicle Historie of Thomas Lord Cromwell, by W. S., 1602; The Puritaine, or The Widdow of Watling-streete, by W. S., 1607; were all (together with Sir John Oldcastle) reprinted in the third folio of Shakespeare's dramatic works, 1663 (and 1664), though from internal evidence it is clear that he did not contribute a single line to any of them.-With respect to The Two Noble Kinsmen, written by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakspeare, Gent., 1634, I think that the case is very different see Some Account of the Lives and Writings of Beaumont and Fletcher, p. lxxx., where I have given my reasons for believing that portions of this play are by Shakespeare,-an opinion to which I still adhere, in spite of all the arguments to the contrary put forth by various critics since the publication of that Account. [1863. In an invaluable work, published since the first edition of this Memoir appeared, Walker, quoting The Two Noble Kinsmen, says, "Surely aut Shakespearius aut diabolus." A Crit. Exam. of the Text of Shakespeare, &c. vol. ii. p. 75.]-The Birth of Merlin, written by William Shakespear and William Rowley, 1662, is a drama almost below contempt. 29 See p. 72. 30 "The latest notice of John Shakespeare hitherto met with occurs in a paper in the Council Chamber at Stratford, containing notes respecting an action of trespass brought by Edward Grevil against several bur |