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his directions to the players in Hamlet), and however well he might acquit himself in some of the subordinate characters of the drama, it does not appear that he ever rose to the higher honors of his profession. But if they were above his attainment, they seem not to have been the objects of his ambition; for by one of his sonnets* we find that he lamented the fortune which had devoted him to the stage, and that he considered himself as degraded by such a public exhibition. The time was not yet come when actors were to be the companions of princes; when their lives, as of illustrious men, were to be written; and when statues were to be erected to them by public contribution!

The amount of the fortune on which Shakspeare retired from the busy world, has been the subject of some discussion. By Gildon, who forbears to state his authority, this fortune is valued at 3007. a year; and by Malone, who, calculating our Poet's real property from authentic documents, assigns a random value to his personal, it is reduced to 2007. Of these two valuations of Shakspeare's property, we conceive that Gildon's approaches the more nearly to the truth; for if to Malone's conjectural estimate of the personal property, of which he professes to be wholly ignorant, be added the thousand pounds given by Southampton (an act of munificence of which we entertain not a doubt), the precise total, as money then bore an interest of 107. per cent., of the three hundred pounds a year will be made up. On the smallest of these incomes, however, when money was at least five times its present value, might our Poet possess the comforts and the liberalities of life; and in the society of his family, and of the neighboring gentry, conciliated by the amiableness of his manners and the pleasantness of his conversation, he seems to have passed his few remaining days in the enjoyment of tranquillity and respect. So exquisite, indeed, appears to have been his relish of the quiet, which was his portion within the walls of New Place, that it induced a complete oblivion of all that had engaged his attention, and had aggrandized his name, in the preceding scenes of his life. Without any regard to his literary fame, either present or to come, he saw with perfect unconcern some of his immortal works brought, mutilated and deformed, before the world, in surreptitious copies; and others of them, with an equal indif

*See Sonnet exi.

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have hooted the wits from the field; and, attaching themselves to the mighty body of Shakspeare, like barnacles to the hull of a proud man-of-war, they are prepared to plough with him the vast ocean of time; and thus, by the only means in their power, to snatch themselves from that oblivion to which Nature had devoted them. It would be unjust, however, to defraud these gentlemen of their proper praise. They have read for men of talents; and, by their gross labor in the mine, they have accumulated materials to be arranged and polished by the hand of the finer artist.-Some apology may be necessary for this short digression from the more immediate subject of my biography. But the three or four years, which were passed by Shakspeare in the peaceful retirement of New Place, are not distinguished by any traditionary anecdote deserving of our record; and the chasm may not improperly be supplied with whatever stands in contiguity with it. I should pass in silence, as too trifling for notice, the story of our Poet's extempore and jocular epitaph on John Combe, a rich townsman of Stratford, and a noted money-lender, if my readers would not object to me that I had omitted an anecdote which had been honored with a place in every preceding biography of my Author. As the circumstance ist related by Rowe, "In a pleasant conversation among their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakspeare, in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph if he happened to outlive 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 ingraved :

'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved.

If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?

Ho! 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." By Aubrey the story is differently told; and the lines in question, with some alterations, which evidently make them worse, are said to have been written after Combe's death. Steevens and Malone discredit the whole tale. The two first lines, as given to us by Rowe, are unquestionably not Shakspeare's; and that any lasting enmity subsisted between these two burghers of Stratford is disproved by the respective wills of the

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parties, John Combe bequeathing five pounds to our Poet, and our Poet leaving his sword to John Combe's nephew and residuary legatee, John Combe himself being at that time deceased. With the two commentators above mentioned, I am inclined, therefore, on the whole, to reject the story as a fabrication; though I cannot, with Steevens, convict the lines of malignity; or think, with him and with Malone, that the character of Shakspeare, on the supposition of his being their author, could require any labored vindication to clear it from stain. In the anecdote, as related by Rowe, I can see nothing but a whimsical sally breaking from the mind of one friend, and of a nature to excite a good-humored smile on the cheek of the other. In Aubrey's hands, the transaction assumes a somewhat darker complexion; and the worse verses, as written after the death of their subject, may justly be branded as malevolent, and as discovering enmity in the heart of their writer. But I have dwelt too long upon a topic which, in truth, is undeserving. of a syllable and if I were to linger on it any longer, for the purpose of exhibiting Malone's reasons for his preference of Aubrey's copy of the epitaph to Rowe's, and his discovery of the propriety and beauty of the single Ho in the last line of Aubrey's, as Ho is the abbreviation of Hobgoblin, one of the names of Robin Goodfellow, the fairy servant of Oberon, my readers would have just cause to complain of me, as sporting with their time and their patience.

On the ninth of July, 1614, Stratford was ravaged by a fire, which destroyed fifty-four dwelling-houses, besides barns and outoffices. It abstained, however, from the property of Shakspeare; and he had only to commiserate the losses of his neighbors.

With his various powers of pleasing; his wit and his humor; the gentleness of his manners; the flow of his spirits and his fancy; the variety of anecdote with which his mind must have been stored; his knowledge of the world, and his intimacy with man, in every gradation of society, from the prompter of a playhouse to the peer and the sovereign, Shakspeare must have been a delightful -nay, a fascinating companion; and his acquaintance must necessarily have been courted by all the prime inhabitants of Stratford and its vicinity. But over this, as over the preceding periods of his life, brood silence and oblivion; and in our total ignorance

of his intimacies and friendships, we must apply to our imagination to furnish out his convivial board, where intellect presided, and delight, with admiration, gave the applause.

On the 2d of February, 1615-16, he married his youngest daughter, Judith, then in the thirty-first year of her age, to Thomas Quiney, a vintner in Stratford; and on the 25th of the succeeding month, he executed his will. He was then, as it would appear, in the full vigor and enjoyment of life; and we are not informed that his constitution had been previously weakened by the attack of any malady. But his days, or rather his hours, were now all numbered; for he breathed his last on the 23d of the ensuing April, on that anniversary of his birth which completed his fifty-second year. It would be gratifying to our curiosity to know something of the disease, which thus prematurely terminated the life of this illustrious man; but the secret is withheld from us; and it would be idle to endeavor to obtain it. We may be certain that Dr. Hall, who was a physician of considerable eminence, attended his father-in-law in his last illness; and Dr. Hall kept a register of all the remarkable cases, with their symptoms and treatment, which, in the course of his practice, had fallen under his observation. This curious MS., which had escaped the enmity of time, was obtained by Malone ; but the recorded cases in it most unfortunately began with the year 1617; and the preceding part of the register, which most probably had been in existence, could no where be found. The mortal complaint, therefore, of William Shakspeare, is likely to remain forever unknown; and as darkness had closed upon his path through life, so darkness now gathered round his bed of death, awfully to cover it from the eyes of succeeding generations.

On the 25th of April, 1616, two days after his decease, he was buried in the chancel of the church of Stratford; and at some period within the seven subsequent years (for in 1623 it is noticed in the verses of Leonard Digges), a monument was raised to his memory, either by the respect of his townsmen or by the piety of relations. It represents the Poet with a countenance of thought, resting on a cushion, and in the act of writing. It is placed under an arch, between two Corinthian columns of black marble, the capitals and bases of which are gilt. The face is said, but, as far as I can find, not on any adequate authority, to have been modelled

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