the spot, and commemorate his likeness, name, and memory. In what year the monument was erected is not known, but certainly before 1623, as it is mentioned in the verses of Leonard Digges in that year. 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 distich is engraved under the cushion :

Judicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, popvlvs mœret, Olympvs habet.

In addition to this Latin inscription, the following lines are found on a tablet immediately underneath the cushion on his monument :

Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so fast?
Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs death hath plast
Within this monvment, Shakspeare; with whome
Qvick natvre dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe
Far more than coste, sieth all yt. he hath writt,
Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt.

Obiit Ano. Doi. 1616. ætatis 53. die 23 Ap.

On his grave-stone underneath is the following inscription, expressed, as Mr. Steevens observes, in an uncouth mixture of small and capital letters :-

Good Frend for Iesus SAKE forbeare

To diGG T-E Dust EncloAsed HERe

It is uncertain whether this epitaph was writt by Shakspeare himself, or by one of his friends after his death. • The imprecation contained in the last line was probably suggested,' as Mr. Malone has remarked, by an apprehension that his remains might share the same fate with those of the rest of his countrymen, and be added to the immense pile of human bones deposited in the charnel-house at Stratford.'

In the year 1741, another very noble and beautiful monument was raised to his memory, at the public expense, in Westminster Abbey, under the direction of the Earl of Burlington, Dr. Mead, Mr. Pope, and Mr. Martyn. It stands near the south door of the Abbey, and was the work of Scheemaker, after a design of Kent. The performers of each of the London theatres gave a benefit to defray the expenses, and the dean and chapter took nothing for the ground.

We have now recorded the substance of the scanty notices respecting the life of Shakspeare, which we are enabled to collect from Rowe and from various commentators on his works. To these we shall add the following anecdotes from John Aubrey, in his manuscript collections in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It is worthy of note, that Aubrey resided at Oxford for several years after 1642; that he was intimate with Sir W. Davenant,

Hobbes, Milton, Ray, &c.; that he made it a practice to collect and write down anecdotes of his friends and of public characters; that Davenant knew Shakspeare; that there was frequent communication between Stratford and Oxford; and that, although there are some variations in the accounts of Rowe and Aubrey, the latter is, on the whole, most intitled to credit.

Mr. William Shakespear was borne at Stratford upon Avon, in the county of Warwick: his father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade; but when he kill'd a calfe, he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne, that was helde not at all inferior to him for a naturall witt, his acquaintance and coetanean, but dyed young. This William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guesse about eighteen, and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and did act exceedingly well. Now Ben Jonson never was a good actor, but an excellent instructor. He began early to make essayes at dramatique poetry, which at that time was very lowe, and his playes tooke well. He was a handsome, well-shap't man, very good company, and of a very readie and pleasant smooth witt: the humour of the constable in A Midsum

mer Night's Dreame,' he happened to take at Grendon, in Bucks, which is the roade from London to Stratford; and there was living that constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Mr. Jos. Howe is of that parish, and knew him. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men dayly, wherever they came. One time, as he was at the tavern, at Stratford-upon-Avon, one Combes, an old rich usurer, was to be buryed; he makes there this extemporary epitaph :

:

Ten in the hundred the devill allowes,

But Combes will have twelve he sweares and vowes:

If any one askes who lies in this tombe,

'Hoh,' quoth the devill, 'tis my John o' Combe.'

'He was wont to goe to his native country once a yeare. I think I have been told, that he left 200 or 300 lib. per annum, there and therabout, to a sister. I have heard Sir William D'Avenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell, who is counted the best comœdian we have now, say that he had a most prodigious witt; and did admire his naturall parts beyond all other dramaticall writers. He was wont to say that he never blotted out a line in his life: sayd Ben Jonson, I wish he had blotted out a thousand.' His comœdies will remain witt as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles

Probably Dogberry, in 'Much Ado about Nothing.'

mores hominum: now our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombeities, that twenty years hence they will not be understood. Though, as Ben Jonson sayes of him, that he had but little Latine and lesse Greek, he understood Latine pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country.' See Letters from the Bodleian Library, &c. iii. 307.

In order to reconcile these conflicting testimonies, Malone supposes that Aubrey confounded the father of our poet, with John, son of Thomas Shakspeare, a butcher at Warwick, who lived at the same period. Dr. Drake, however, conjectures that John Shakspeare, when under the pressure of adversity, might combine the two employments of wool-stapler and butcher, which are in a certain degree connected with each other. The same learned author seems also inclined to believe, with Malone, that, in the early part of his life, Shakspeare was employed in the office of an attorney; that some uncertain rumor of this kind might have continued to the middle of the last century; and by the time it reached Aubrey, our poet's original occupation was changed from a scrivener to that of a schoolmaster.

To the disposition and moral character of Shakspeare, to the felicity of his temper and the sweetness of his manners, tradition has ever borne the most uniform and favorable testimony: and, indeed, haa