SHAKESPEARE.

I.

THE SHAKESPEARE FAMILY.

PHILOSOPHERS may see a moral in the fact that the greatest luminaries of modern times have risen from obscurity. Columbus was a cabin-boy; Luther, the son of a labouring miner; Copernicus was an unknown curate in the wilds of Lithuania; three mechanics of Strasburg invented the printing-press; the great Bishop Butler was the son of a grocer; Franklin was a printer's devil; Burns, a ploughman; and George Stephenson first saw the light-the divine light of science-in a coalpit.

Nothing could more clearly show us that greatness is independent of lineage. These men sprang, like Adam, from the ground. They were not, as we are accustomed to say, self-made; they were created; and the image of God stands freshly out upon them, a special impress. The source of their nobility is Nature; and this is a patent that needs neither blazoning from heralds, nor recognition from kings.

Of this master-type was WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, the father of our drama, our literature, and almost of our language, but whose origin is so obscure, that an interval of barely three hundred years shrouds it in the mists of ages

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Indeed, the same cloud envelopes his whole history; for the personal traces he has left behind are like the impressions of a leaf on a fossil rock; while his mighty works, which embalm this relic, are the rock itself. The very orthography of his name is a subject of dispute, as nearly everyone who bore it had his own variation; and it thus takes as many shapes as Ariel. Shakespeare is its most modern form, and being also the most familiar, claims our accep

tance.

But the poet's admirers derive little satisfaction from settling only the spelling. The patronymic of Shakespeare has been thought to hold within it the germ of the family history, its foundation incident; and rare Ben Jonson has been made an exorcist to draw this forth:

"Look how his father's face

Lives in his issue: even so the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned and true-fill'd lines,

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance."

The suggestive name of the poet thus yawns before the eye, like an ancestral vault; and discloses a line of ghostly progenitors, who burst their cerements, and appear, like the Royal Dane, in "complete steel." Camden, Verotegan, and Bogan consider that it was originally given to a soldier; but we must remember that surnames had been in common use for a full century before it assumed the form of Shakespeare, and what we know of the family shows that the spade and the crook, rather than the spear, would best typify its pursuits.

The most diligent research has failed to trace the poet's ancestry to a higher source than his grandfather, Richard Shakespeare, of Snitterfield, although Shakespeares were settled in Warwickshire from a much earlier date, and,

under the various forms of the name, were plenty as blackberries. The roll of the guild of Knowle marks their presence in the county as far back as 1470, and they hold their place among the brothers and sisters of the body till 1512, blazoning the list with all the variations of their patronymic.

This guild roll is, indeed, the roll of Battle Abbey to the Shakespeares, carrying us back to their first appearance; and, as regards the variations of their name, it is confirmed by the register of the Stratford Bailiff's Court-another muniment of the family, which, though not so genteel, throws much light on its history.

Rowe, who wrote in an age when mere birth was more esteemed than now, and felt a laudable desire to give his hero this advantage, describes the Shakespeare family as long settled at Stratford, where, " as appears by the register and public writings," they "were of good figure and fashion," and "are mentioned as gentlemen." But Rowe acquired his information third-hand from Betterton, the celebrated actor, who, though he visited Warwickshire expressly to collect the fading traditions of the poet, seems to have made but a cursory inspection of "public writings," merely pioneering the way for future explorers. The discoveries of modern times refute the assertion of Rowe, though it continues to find adherents. Illustrious ancestry is not to be despised, yet no one can suppose that it would give stature to Shakespeare

"Not propped by ancestry, whose grace Chalks successors their way; nor called upon For high feats done to the crown; neither allied

To eminent assistants; but, spider-like,

Out of his self-drawing web-Oh, GIVE US NOTE!—
The force of his own merit makes his way;

A gift that Heaven gives for him!”'