Davenant (afterwards mayor of that city), a grave, melancholy man; who, as well as his wife, used much to delight in Shakspeare's pleasant company. Their son, young Will Dayenant (afterwards Sir William), was then a little school-boy in the town, of about seven or eight years old, and so fond also of Shakspeare, that whenever he heard of his arrival, he would fly from school to see him. One day, an old townsman observing the boy running homeward, almost out of breath, asked him whither he was posting in that heat and hurry. He answered, to see his god-father Shhakspeare. There's a good boy, said the other, but have a care that you don't take God's name in vain. This story Mr. Pope told me at the Earl of Oxford's table, upon occasion of some discourse which arose about Shakspeare's monument, then newly erected in Westminster Abbey; and he quoted Mr. Betterton, the player, for his authority." This tale is also mentioned by Anthony Wood; and certain it is, that the traditionary scandal of Oxford, has always spoken of Shakspeare as the father of D'Avenant: but it imputes a crime to our author, of which we may, without much stretch of charity, acquit him. It originated in the wicked vanity of D'Avenant himself, who disdaining his honest but mean descent from the vinter, had the shameless impiety to deny his father, and reproach the memory of his mother, by claiming consanguinity with Shakspeare. We are informed by a constant tradition, that a few years previous to his death, our author retired from the theatre, and spent his time at Stratford, "in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends." This event appears to have taken place about the close of 1613. He had his wife and family about him; he was surrounded by familiar scenes and faces; and he was in possession of a property of about £300 a-ycar, equal to much more than £1000 at present; and which must have been fully adequate to his modest views of happiness. The anecdotes that are in circulation respecting this portion of his life, are few, trivial, and very probably unfounded in fact; but, such as they are, I have collected them, rather that nothing connected with the name of Shakspeare should be omitted in this edition, than from any regard for their intrinsic value. A story, preserved by the tradition of Stratford, and which, according to Malone, "was related fifty years ago to a gentleman of that place, by a person upwards of eighty years of age, whose father was contemporary with Shakspeare," may not improperly be attributed to this portion of his life. It is said, that as Shakspeare was leaning over the hatch of a mercer's door at Stratford, a drunken blacksmith, with a carbuncled face, reeled up to him, and demanded, "Now, Mr. Shakspeare, tell me if you can, The difference between a youth and a young man?” to which our poet instantly rejoined: "Thou son of fire, with thy face like a maple, The same difference as between a scalded and coddled apple." "A part of the wit," says Dr. Drake, "turns upon the com parison between the blacksmith's face, and a species of maple, the bark of which is uncommonly rough, and the grain undulated and crisped into a variety of curls." Rowe relates 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 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 Shak speare gave him these four verses: "Ten in the hundred lies here ingrav'd; 'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd: If any man ask, who lies in this tomb? Oh! oh! 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." Aubrey narrates the story differently, and says, "that one time as Shakspeare was at the tavern at Stratford, Mr. Coombes, an old usurer, was to be buried, he makes there this extempore epitaph upon him: Ten in the hundred the devil allows, But Combe will have twelve, he swears and he vows; If any one ask, who lies in this tomb? Hah! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe.'" Dr. Drake considers Aubrey's version of the event as the most probable. In some of its circumstances, Rowe's account is contradicted; for it is certain, that Shakspeare and Combe continued friends till the death of the latter; who left him £5 as a token of kind remembrance in his will; and that no feud afterwards arose between our poet and the relations of Combe, seems pretty evident from Shakspeare's having bequeathed his sword to Mr. Thomas Combe, the nephew of the usurer. In addition to the above ludicrous verses, two epitaphs of a serious character have been ascribed to Shakspeare by Sir William Dugdale which are preserved in a collection of epitaphs at the end of the Visitation of Salop. Among the monuments in Tongue Church, in the county of Salop, is one erected in remembrance of Sir Thomas Stanly, knight, whom Malone supposes to have died about 1600. The tomb stands on the north side of the chancel, supported with Corinthian columns. It hath two figures of men in armor lying on it, one below the arches and columns, the other above them; and besides a prose inscription in front, the monument is enriched by the following verses of Shakspeare. Written on the east end of the tomb: "Aske who lyes here, but do not weepe; He is not dead, he doth but sleepe. This stony register is for his bones, His fame is more perpetual than these stones; Written on the west end thereof: "Not monumental stone preserves our fame, The memory of him for whom this stands, Shall outlive marble, and defacer's hands. When all to time's consumption shall be given, Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in heaven." Besides these inscriptions for the monument of Sir Thomas Stanly, which we have the authority of Dugdale, a Warwickshire man, and who spent the greater part of his life in that county, for attributing to our author; we find another epitaph ascribed to him in a manuscript volume of poems by William Herrick, and others. The volume, which is in the handwriting of the time of Charles the First, is among Rawlinson's collections, in the Bodelain Library, and contains the following epitaph: "When God was pleas'd, the world unwilling yet, Elias James to Nature payd his debt, And here reposeth: as he lived, he dyde; The saying in him strongly verifide,— Such life, such death: then, the known truth to tell, He lived a godly life, and dyde as well. "WM. SHAKSPEARE." There was a family of the surname of James, formerly resi dent at Stratford, to some one of whom the above verses were probably inscribed. The life of our poet was now drawing towards its close; and he was soon to require from the hands of others those last honors to the dead, which, while alive, he had shown himself so ready to contribute. His eldest and favorite daughter, Susanna, had been married as early as 1607, to Dr. Hall, a physician of considerable skill and reputation in his profession, who resided at Stratford; and early in 1616, his youngest daughter, Judith, married Mr. Thomas Quincy, a vintner of the same place. This ceremony took place on February the 10th. On the twenty-fifth of the following month, her father made his will-being, according to his own account, in perfect health and memory-and a second month had not elapsed ere Shakspeare was no more. He died on the twenty-third of April, 1616, and on his birth-day, having completed his fifty-second year. "It is remarkable," says Dr. Drake, "that on the same day expired, in Spain, his great and amiable contemporary Cervantes; and the world was thus deprived, nearly at the same moment, of the two most original writers which modern Europe has produced." Of the disease by which the life of our poet was thus suddenly terminated, we are left in perfect ignorance. His sonin-law, Dr. Hall, left for publication a manuscript collection of cases collected from not less than a thousand diseases; but the earliest case recorded is dated 1617, and thus all mention is omitted of the only one which could have secured to his work any permanent interest or value On the second day after his decease, the remains of Shakspeare were interred on the north side of the great church of Stratford. Here a monument, containing a bust of the poet, was erected to his memory. He is represented under an arch, in a sitting posture, a cushion spread before him, with a pen in his right hand, and his left rested on a scroll of paper. The following Latin distich is engraved under the cushion: "Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus mæret, Olympus habet." The first syllable in Socratem is here made short, which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we should read Sophoclem. Shakspeare is then appositely compared with a dramatic author among the ancients: but still it should be remembered, that the eulogium 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 Faery Queeno of Spenser. To this Latin inscription on Shakspeare, 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 |