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judgment of a great man upon this occasion was, I think, very just and proper. In a conversation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William Davenant, Endymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eton, and Ben Jonson, Sir John Suckling, who was a professed admirer of Shakespeare, had undertaken his defence against Ben Jonson with some warmth; Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, told them, That if Mr. Shakespeare had not read the ancients, he had likewise not stolen any thing from them; and that if he would produce any one topic finely treated by any one of them, he would undertake to shew something upon the same subject, at least as well written, by Shakespeare.

The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. He had the good fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasion, and, in that, to his wish; and is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford. His pleasurable wit and good-nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Amongst them, it is a story almost still remembered in that country, 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 Shakespeare, in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph, if he happened to out-live him; and since he could not know

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what might be said of him when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately upon which Shakespeare gave him these four verses;

Ten in the hundred lies here engrav'd,

'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd:

any

If 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.

He died in the 53d year of his age, and was buried on the north-side of the chancel, in the great church at Stratford, where a monument' was erected to his memory. On his grave-stone underneath is,

Good friend! for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust inclosed here.

Blest be the man that spares these stones!
And curst be he that moves my bones 2!

He had three daughters, of whom two lived to be married; Judith, the elder, to one Mr. Thomas

He died on his birth-day, April 23, 1616, and had exactly completed his fifty-second year. MALONE. And curst be he that moves my bones!

It is uncertain whether this epitaph was written by Shakespeare himself, or by one of his friends after his death. The imprecation contained in this last line might have been suggested by an apprehension that our author's 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. This, however, is mere conjecture; for similar execrations are found in many ancient Latin epitaphs. MALONE.

Quiney, by whom she had three sons, who all died without children; and Susanna, who was his favourite, to Dr. John Hall, a physician of good reputation in that country. She left one child only, a daughter who was married, first to Thomas Nash, Esq. and afterwards to Sir John Bernard of Abbington, but died likewise without issue1.

This is what I could learn of any note, either relating to himself or family: the character of the man is best seen in his writings. But since Ben Jonson has made a sort of an essay towards it in his Discoveries, I will give it in his words:

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"I remember the players have often mentioned it "as an honour to Shakespeare, that in writing-what "soever he penned-he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thou"sand! which they thought a malevolent speech. "I had not told posterity this, but for their igno66 rance, who chose that circumstance to commend "their friend by, wherein he most faulted: and to "justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, "and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, "as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and "of an open and free nature, had an excellent "fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; "wherein he flowed with that facility, that some"times it was necessary he should be stopped: "Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Hate"rius. His wit was in his own power. Would the

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This, however, is a mistake, as will appear by the pedigree annexed to the list of baptisms, &c. REED.

"rule of it had been so too! Many times he fell "into those things which could not escape laugh"ter; as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him,

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Cæsar did never wrong, but with just cause.

"And such like, which were ridiculous. But he re"deemed his vices with his virtues : there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."

As for the passage which he mentions out of Shakespeare, there is somewhat like it in "Julius Cæsar," but without the absurdity; nor did I ever meet with it in any edition that I have seen, as quoted by Mr. Jonson. Beside his plays in this edition, there are two or three ascribed to him by Mr. Langbain, which I have never seen, and know nothing of. He wrote likewise "Venus and Adonis," and "Tarquin and Lucrece," in stanzas, which have been printed in a late collection of poems. As to the character given of him by Ben Jonson, there is a good deal in it: but I believe it may be as well expressed by what Horace says of the first Romans, who wrote tragedy upon the Greek models (or indeed translated them) in his epistle to Augustus:

-Naturâ sublimis et acer:

Nam spirat tragicum satis, et feliciter audet;
Sed turpem putat in chartis metuitque lituram.

As I have not proposed to myself to enter into a large and complete collection upon Shakespeare's

works, so I will only take the liberty, with all due submission to the judgment of others, to observe some of those things I have been pleased with in looking him over.

His plays are properly to be distinguished only into comedies and tragedies. Those which are called histories, and even some of his comedies, are really tragedies, with a run or mixture of comedy amongst them. That way of tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become so agreeable to the English taste, that though the severer critics among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences seem to be better pleased with it than with an exact tragedy. "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "The Comedy of Errors," and "The Taming of the Shrew," are all pure comedy; the rest, however they are called, have something of both kinds. It is not very easy to determine which way of writing he was most excellent in. There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comical humours; and though they did not then strike at all ranks of people, as the satire of the present age has taken the liberty to do, yet there is a pleasing and a well - distinguished variety in those characters which he thought fit to meddle with. Falstaff is allowed by every body to be a master-piece; the character is always well sustained though drawn out into the length of three plays; and even the account of his death, given by his old landlady, Mrs. Quickly, in the first act of "Henry the Fifth," though it be extremely natural, is yet as diverting as any part of his life. If there

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