CHAPTER X.

BIOGRAPHY OF SHAKSPEARE RESUMED—HIS

IRREGULARITIES—DEER-STEALING IN SIR THOMAS LUCY'S

PARK—ACCOUNT OF THE LUCY FAMILY—DAISY-HILL, THE KEEPER'S

LODGE, WHERE SHAKSPEARE WAS CONFINED ON THE CHARGE OF STEALING

DEER—SHAKSPEARE'S REVENGE—BALLAD ON LUCY—SEVERE PROSECUTION

OF SIR THOMAS—NEVER FORGOTTEN BY SHAKSPEARE—THIS CAUSE,

AND PROBABLY ALSO DEBT, AS HIS FATHER WAS NOW IN REDUCED

CIRCUMSTANCES, INDUCED HIM TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY FOR LONDON

ABOUT 1586—REMARKS ON THIS REMOVAL.

After the slight sketch of rural life which we have just given; of its

manners, customs, diversions, and superstitions, as they existed during

the latter part of the sixteenth century, we shall now proceed with the

biographical narrative of our author, resuming it from the close of the

fourth chapter.

To regulate the workings of an ardent imagination, and to control the

effervescence of the passions in early life, experience has uniformly

taught us to consider as a task of great difficulty; and seldom,

indeed, capable of being achieved without the advice and direction of

those, who, under the guidance of similar admonition, have successfully

borne up against the numerous temptations to which human frailty is

subjected. That Shakspeare possessed powers of fancy greatly beyond

the common lot of humanity, and that with these is almost constantly

connected a correspondent fervency of temperament and passion, will not

probably be denied; and if it be recollected that the poet became the

arbitrator of his own conduct at the early age of eighteen, not much

wonder will be excited, although he was a married man, and a father, if

we have to record some juvenile irregularities. Tradition affirms, and

the report has been repeated by Mr. Rowe, that he had the misfortune,

shortly after his settlement in Stratford, to form an intimacy with

some young men of thoughtless and dissipated character, who, among

other illegalities, had been in the habit of deer-stealing, and by

whom, more than once, he was induced, under the idea of a frolic, to

join in their reprehensible practice.

The scene of depredation when Shakspeare and his companions were

detected, was Fulbroke Park, at that time belonging to Sir Thomas

Lucy, Knight. This gentleman, who has obtained celebrity principally,

if not solely, as the prosecutor of Shakspeare, was descended from a

family, whose pedigree has been deduced, by Dugdale, from the reign of

Richard the First; the name of Lucy, however, was not assumed by his

ancestors until the thirty-fourth of Henry the Third. Sir Thomas, in

the first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, built a noble mansion

at Charlcott, near Stratford, but on the opposite side of the Avon;

this edifice, which still exists, is constructed of brick with stone

coins, and though somewhat modernized, still preserves, as a whole, its

ancient Gothic character, especially the grand front, which exhibits

pretty accurately its pristine state. Fuller has recorded Sir Thomas as

sheriff for the county of Warwickshire in the tenth year of Elizabeth,

and informs us, that his armorial bearings were Gul. Crusulee Or, 3

Picks (or Lucies) Hauriant Ar.[402:A]

That the rich woods, sequestered lawns, and romantic recesses of

Fulbroke Park, would very frequently attract the footsteps of our

youthful bard, independent of any lure which the capture of its game

might afford, we may justly surmise; and still more confidently may

we affirm, that his meditations or diversions in this forest laid the

foundation of a part of the beautiful scenery which occurs in _As You

Like It_. The woodland pictures in this delightful play are faithful

transcripts of what he had felt and seen in those secluded haunts,

particularly the description of the wounded deer, the pathos and

accuracy of which are no doubt referrible to the actual contemplation

of such an incident, in the shades of Fulbroke; they strikingly prove,

indeed, that the habits of the chase, though fostered in the morn of

youth, had not, even in respect to the objects of their sport, in

the smallest degree impaired the native tenderness and humanity of

the poet. The expressions of pity, in fact, for the sufferings of a

persecuted animal were never uttered in words more impressive than what

the ensuing dialogue exhibits:

"_Duke._ Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,—

Being native burghers of this desert city,—

Should, in their own confines, with forked head

Have their round haunches gor'd.

_Lord._ Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;

And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp

Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.

To-day, my lord of Amiens, and myself,

Did steal behind him, as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out

Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:

To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,

That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,

Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,

The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,

That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

Almost to bursting; and the big round tears

Cours'd one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase: and thus the hairy fool,

Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,

Augmenting it with tears."[403:A]

The detection of Shakspeare in his adventurous amusement, was followed,

it is said, by confinement for a short time in the keeper's lodge,

until the charge had been substantiated against him. A farm-house in

the park, situated on a spot called Daisy Hill, is still pointed out as

the very building which sheltered the delinquent on this unfortunate

occasion.[403:B]

That Sir Thomas had reason to complain of this violation of his

property, and was warranted in taking proper steps to prevent its

recurrence, who will deny? and yet it appears from tradition, that

a reprimand and public exposure of his conduct constituted all the

punishment that was at _first_ inflicted on the offender. Here the

matter would have rested, had not the irritable feelings of our young

bard, inflamed by the disgrace which he had suffered, induced him to

attempt a retaliation on the magistrate. He had recourse to his talents

for satire, and the ballad which he produced for this purpose was

probably his earliest effort as a writer.

Of this pasquinade, which the poet took care should be affixed to

Sir Thomas's park-gates, and extensively circulated through his

neighbourhood, three stanzas have been brought forward as genuine

fragments. The preservation of the whole would certainly have been

a most entertaining curiosity; but even the authenticity of what is

said to have been preserved, becomes a subject of interest, when we

recollect, that the fate and fortunes of our author hinged upon the

consequences of this juvenile production.

The first of these fragments, which is the opening stanza, rests upon

testimony of considerable weight and respectability; upon the authority

of a Mr. Thomas Jones, who was born about 1613 and resided at Tarbick,

a village in Worcestershire, eighteen miles from Stratford, where

he died, aged upwards of ninety, in 1703. He is considered by Mr.

Malone, as the grandson of a Mr. Thomas Jones, who dwelt in Stratford

during the period that Shakspeare was an inhabitant of it, and who had

four sons between the years 1581 and 1590, one of whom, settling at

Tarbick, became the father of the preserver of the fragment.[404:A]

This venerable old man could remember having heard from several very

aged people at Stratford the whole history of the poet's transgression,

and could repeat the first stanza of the ballad which he had written

in ridicule of Sir Thomas. A friend of his to whom he was one day

repeating this stanza, which was the whole that he could recollect,

had the precaution to take a copy of it from his recitation, and

the grandson of the person thus favoured, a Mr. Wilkes, presented a

transcript of it to Mr. Oldys and Mr. Capell. Among the collections

for a _Life of Shakspeare_ left by the former of these gentlemen, this

stanza was found, "faithfully transcribed," says its possessor, "from

the copy which his (Mr. Jones's) relation very courteously communicated

to me[405:A];" and of Mr. Oldys's veracity it is important to add, that

Mr. Steevens considered it as unimpeachable, remarking, at the same

time, that "it is not very probable that a ballad should be forged,

from which an undiscovered wag could derive no triumph over antiquarian

credulity."[405:B] It must be confessed that neither the wit nor the

poetry of these lines, which we are about to communicate, deserve much

praise, and that the greater part of the point, if it can be termed

such, depends upon provincial pronunciation; for in a note on the copy

which Mr. Capell possessed, it is said, that "the people of those

parts pronounce _lowsie_ like Lucy[405:C]:" but let us listen to the

commencement of this once important libel:—

"A parliamente member, a justice of peace,

At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse,

If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it,

Then Lucy is lowsie whatever befall it:

He thinks himself greate,

Yet an asse in his state

We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate.

If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it,

Sing lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it."

Upon the next fragment of this composition, including two stanzas,

an equal degree of confidence cannot be reposed; for it occurs in a

manuscript _History of the Stage_, written between the years 1727

and 1730, in which many falsehoods have been detected; but still the

internal evidence is such as to render its genuineness far from

improbable. The narrative of its acquisition informs us, that "the

learned Mr. Joshua Barnes, late Greek Professor of the University of

Cambridge, baiting about forty years ago at an inn in Stratford, and

hearing an old woman singing part of the above said song, such was his

respect for Mr. Shakspeare's genius, that he gave her a new gown for

the two following stanzas in it; and could she have said it all, he

would (as he often said in company, when any discourse has casually

arose about him) have given her ten guineas:

"Sir Thomas was too covetous

To covet so much _deer_,

When horns enough upon his head,

Most plainly did appear.

Had not his Worship one _deer_ left?

What then? He had a wife

Took pains enough to find him horns

Should last him during life."[406:A]

The quibble upon the word _deer_ in these lines strongly tends to

authenticate them as a genuine production of our bard; for he has

in more places than one of his dramas amused himself with a similar

jingle: thus in the _First Part of Henry the Sixth_, allowing this play

to have issued from his pen, Talbot, encouraging his forces, exclaims

"Sell every man his life as _dear_ as mine,

And they shall find _dear deer_ of us my friends;"[406:B]

and again in the _First Part of King Henry the Fourth_, the Prince,

lamenting over Falstaff, says

"Death hath not struck so fat a _deer_ to-day,

Though many _dearer_, in this bloody fray."[406:C]

Mr. Whiter, who first applied these corroborating passages to the

subject before us, adds, "With respect to the verses in question, I

cannot but observe that, however suspicious their external evidence

may appear, they contain within themselves some very striking features

of authenticity; and may, I think, be readily conceived to have

proceeded from the pen of our young Bard, before he was removed from

the little circle of his native place, when his powers, unformed and

unpractised, were roused only by resentment to a Country Justice, and

destined merely to delight the rustic companions of his deer-stealing

adventure.—As an additional evidence to the quibble on the word

_deer_, which appears to be intended in these verses, we may observe

that there is no topic, to which our author so delights to allude, as

the Horns of the Cuckold.—Let me be permitted to remark in general,

that the anecdotes, which have been delivered down to us respecting

our poet, appear to me neither improbable, nor, when duly examined,

inconsistent with each other: even those, which seem least allied to

probability, contain in my opinion the _adumbrata_, if not _expressa

signa veritatis_."[407:A]

Whatever might be the merits of this ballad as a poetical composition,

its effect as a satire was severely felt; nor can we greatly blame the

conduct of Sir Thomas Lucy, if we consider, on the one hand, the lenity

which was at first shown to the young offender, and, on the other, the

publicity which was industriously given to this provoking libel; for

it is recorded by Mr. Jones of Tarbick, that it was the placarding

of this piece of sarcasm "which exasperated the knight to apply to a

lawyer at Warwick to proceed against[407:B] him." More magnanimity, it

must be confessed, would have been displayed by altogether neglecting

this splenetic retaliation; but still the provocation was sufficiently

bitter to excite the resentment of a man who might not be entitled

to the appellations so liberally bestowed on Sir Thomas by one of

the poet's commentators of "vain, weak, and vindictive[407:C]." The

protection of property and character, provided the means resorted to

for security be proportioned to the offence, can neither be deemed

foolish nor oppressive, and that the bounds of moderation were exceeded

in this instance, we have no sufficient grounds for asserting. Of

the character of the magistrate nothing certain has transpired; but

if we may be allowed to form an opinion of his temper and abilities,

from the only trait which can be considered as indicatory, we must

pronounce them to have been neither despicable nor unamiable. In the

church at Charlcott there are still remaining several monuments of the

Lucy family, among which is one to the memory of Sir Thomas and his

lady; the effigies of the knight affords a very pleasing idea of his

countenance, but is unaccompanied by date or inscription; over his

wife, however, who reposes by his side, at the age of sixty-three, is a

very striking encomium _written by himself_, the conclusion of which is

attested in the following emphatic terms; after much apparently sincere

eulogy, he adds, that she was, "when all is spoken that can be said, a

woman so furnished and garnished with vertue as not to be bettered, and

hardly to be equalled by any. As she lived most vertuously, so she dyed

most godly. _Set down by him_ that best did know what hath been written

to be true. THOMAS LUCY."

This may very justly be considered, we think, as a proof, not only

of the conjugal happiness of our knight, but of his possession of

an intellect far from contemptible; yet is it very possible that

resentment, even in a mind of still superior order, should for a time

excite undue warmth and animosity, especially under the lash of satire;

and we are the more willing to believe this to have been the case in

the present instance, both from the known benevolence of the poet's

character, and from the pertinacity with which he continued to remember

the injury; for it is generally agreed that the opening scene of the

_Merry Wives of Windsor_ is intended to ridicule Sir Thomas, under the

character of Justice Shallow. Now the representation of this comedy

in its new-modelled and enlarged state, certainly did not take place

until after the accession of King James, and as the prosecutor of our

bard died on the 18th of August, 1600, it is not probable that the

resentment of the poet would have survived the death of Sir Thomas,

had not the severity of the magistrate been originally pushed too far.

This dialogue also between Shallow, Slender, and Sir Hugh Evans, serves

strongly to confirm the authenticity of the commencing stanza of the

ballad; for the Welsh parson plays upon the word _luce_ in the same

manner as that fragment has done upon the sir-name _Lucy_. Justice

Shallow, it should likewise be remembered, is complaining of Falstaff

for beating his men, _killing his deer_, and breaking open his lodge,

and he threatens that "if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall

not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire," to which Slender adds,—"In the

county of Gloster, justice of peace, and _coram_.

"_Shal._ Ay, cousin Slender, and _Cust-alorum_.

_Slen._ Ay, and _ratolorum_ too, and a gentleman born, master

parson; who writes himself _armigero_; in any bill, warrant,

quittance, or obligation, _armigero_.

_Shal._ Ay, that we do; and have done any time these three

hundred years.

_Slen._ All his successors, gone before him, have done't; and

all his ancestors, that come after him, may: they may give the

dozen white luces in their coat.

_Shal._ It is an old coat.

_Evans._ The dozen white _louses_ do become an old coat well;

it agrees well, passant: it is a familiar beast to man, and

signifies—love.

_Shal._ The luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old

coat.

_Slen._ I may quarter, coz?

_Shal._ You may, by marrying.

_Evans._ It is marring, indeed, if he quarter it.

_Shal._ Not a whit.

_Evans._ Yes, py'r-lady; if he has a quarter of your coat,

there is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple

conjectures; but this all one: if Sir John Falstaff have

committed disparagements unto you, I am of the church, and

will be glad to do my benevolence, to make atonements and

compromises between you.

_Shal._ The Council shall hear it; it is a riot."[409:A]

Though the portrait thus given of Sir Thomas Lucy (in the person of

Shallow) represent him as _weak_ and _vain_, yet we must recollect that

it is still drawn in the spirit of retaliation and satire, and was most

undoubtedly meant for a caricature.

It appears then more than probable, indeed from the testimony of Mr.

Jones it appears to be the fact, that the prosecution, which, there is

little doubt, had been threatened on the detection of the trespass, was

only carried into execution in consequence of the _poetical_ assault on

the part of our author, who, possibly, thought nothing serious could

occur from such a mode of revenge.

The circumstances, therefore, of the prosecution being threatened in

the first instance, and taking place in the second, might occasion the

report which Mr. Rowe has inserted in his Life of Shakspeare, where,

speaking of the ballad as his first essay in poetry, he adds, "it is

said to have been so very bitter, that it _redoubled_ the prosecution

against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business

and family in Warwickshire, for some time, and shelter himself in

London."[410:A]

That Shakspeare left Stratford for London, about the year 1586 or 1587,

and that the prosecution commenced by Sir Thomas Lucy contributed to

this change of situation, are events which we may with safety admit;

but that the libel was the _sole_ cause of the removal appears not very

probable; and we are inclined to believe with Mr. Chalmers, that debt

added wings to his flight. "While other boys," remarks this ingenious

controversialist, "are only snivelling at school, and thinking nothing

of life, Shakspeare entered the world, with little but his love to

make him happy, and little but his genius to prevent the intrusion of

misery. An increasing family, and pressing wants, obliged him to look

beyond the limits of Stratford, for subsistence, and for fame. He felt,

doubtless, emotions of genius, and he saw, certainly, persons, who had

not better pretensions, than his own, rising to eminence in a higher

scene. By these motives was he probably induced to remove to London, in

the period, between the years 1585, and 1588; chased from his home, by

the terriers of the law, for debt, rather than for deer-stealing, or

for libelling."[410:B]

The probability of this having been the case, will be much heightened,

when we recollect, that between the years 1579 and 1586 the father

of Shakspeare had fallen into distressed circumstances; that during

the first of these periods, he had been excused paying a weekly

contribution of 4_d._, and that during the latter he was under the

necessity of resigning his office as alderman, not being able to defray

the expense of attendance at the common halls; facts, which while they

ascertain his impoverished state, at the same time prove his utter

inability to assist his son, now burdened with a family, and anxiously

looking round for the means of its support.

For the adoption of the year 1586 or 1587, as the era of our author's

emigration to town, several powerful, and almost convincing, arguments

may be given, and these it will be necessary here to state.

It is well ascertained that Shakspeare married in the year 1582, and

Mr. Rowe has affirmed that "in this kind of settlement he continued

_for some time_, till an extravagance (the deer-stealing frolic) that

he was guilty of, forced him both out of his country, and that way of

living which he had taken up."[411:A] Now that this _settlement for

some time_ was the period which elapsed between the years 1582 and

1586, will almost certainly appear, when we recollect the domestic

events which occurred during its progress; that, according to

tradition, he had embraced his father's business, on entering into

the marriage-state; and that the family of the poet in short was

increased in this interval, by the birth of three children, baptized

at Stratford; Susanna, May 26th, 1583, and Hamnet and Judith, Feb. 2d,

1584-5.

That the removal was not likely to have taken place later than 1587,

will be generally admitted, when we advert to the commencement of his

literary labours. The issue of research has rendered it highly probable

that our bard was a corrector and improver of old plays for the stage

in 1589; it has discovered from evidence amounting almost to certainty,

that he was a writer for the theatre on a plan of greater originality

in 1591, and that, even so early as 1592, he was noticed as a dramatic

poet of some celebrity. Now, if we compare these facts, which will be

noticed more fully hereafter, with the poet's own assertion, that the

_Venus and Adonis_ was "_the first heir of his invention_[412:A]," it

will go far to prove, that this poem, which is not a short one, and

is elaborated with great care, must have been composed between his

departure from Stratford, and his commencement as a writer for the

stage, (that is between the years 1586 and 1589;) for while there is

no ground to surmise that it was written on the banks of the Avon,

there is sufficient evidence to assert that it was finished, though not

published before he was known to fame.

It is impossible to contemplate the flight of Shakspeare from

his family and native town, without pausing to reflect upon the

consequences which followed that event; consequences most singularly

propitious, not only to the intellectual character of his country in

particular, but to the excitation and progress of genius throughout the

world. Had not poverty and prosecution united in driving Shakspeare

from his humble occupation in Warwickshire, how many matchless lessons

of wisdom and morality, how many unparalleled displays of wit and

imagination, of pathos and sublimity, had been buried in oblivion;

pictures of emotion, of character, of passion, more profound than mere

philosophy had ever conceived, more impressive than poetry had ever

yet embodied; strains which shall now sound through distant posterity

with increasing energy and interest, and which shall powerfully and

beneficially continue to influence and to mould both national and

individual feeling.

FOOTNOTES:

[402:A] Fuller's Worthies, part iii. p. 132. The Luce or Pike is very

abundant in this part of the Avon, and there may still be seen in the

kitchen of Charlecot-house, the representation of a pike, weighing

forty pounds, a native of this stream, and caught in the year 1640.

[403:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 42, 43. Act ii. sc. 1.

[403:B] Ireland's Views on the Avon, p. 154.

[404:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 128. note 1.

[405:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 62. note.

[405:B] Ibid. p. 62.

[405:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 63.

[406:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 63.

[406:B] Ibid. vol. xiii. p. 127. Act iv. sc. 2.

[406:C] Ibid. vol. xi. p. 426. Act v. sc. 4.

[407:A] Whiter's Specimen of a Commentary on Shakspeare, p. 94, 95.

[407:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 62.

[407:C] Ibid.

[409:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 7. et seq.

[410:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 63.

[410:B] Chalmers's Apology, p. 47, 48.

[411:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 61.

[412:A] Vide Dedication of the Poem to the Earl of Southampton.

PART II.

_SHAKSPEARE IN LONDON._

CHAPTER I.

SHAKSPEARE'S ARRIVAL IN LONDON ABOUT THE YEAR 1586, WHEN

TWENTY-TWO YEARS OF AGE—LEAVES HIS FAMILY AT STRATFORD,

VISITING THEM OCCASIONALLY—HIS INTRODUCTION TO THE STAGE—HIS

MERITS AS AN ACTOR.

No era in the annals of Literary History ever perhaps occurred

of greater importance, than that which witnessed the entrance of

Shakspeare into the metropolis of his native country; a position

which will readily be granted, if we consider the total revolution

which this event produced in the Literature of the Stage, and the

vast influence which, through the medium of the most popular branch

of our poetry, it has subsequently exerted on the minds, manners,

and taste of our countrymen. Friendless, persecuted, poor, about the

early age of twenty-two, was the greatest poet which the world has

ever seen, compelled to desert his home, his wife, his children, to

seek employment from the hands of strangers. Rich, however, in talent,

beyond all the sons of men, blessed with a cheerful disposition, an

active mind, and a heart conscious of integrity, soon did the clouds

which overspread his youth break away, and unveil a character which has

ever since been the delight, the pride, the boast of England.

We have assigned some strong reasons, at the close of the last chapter,

for placing the epoch of Shakspeare's arrival in London, about 1586 or

1587; and we shall now bring forward some presumptive proofs that he

not only left his wife and family at Stratford on his first visit to

the capital, but that his native town continued to be their settled

residence during his life.

Mr. Rowe has affirmed upon a tradition which we have no claim to

dispute, that he "was obliged to _leave_ his _family_ for some

time;" a fact in the highest degree probable from the causes which

led to his removal; for it is not to be supposed, situated as he

then was, that he would be willing to render his wife and children

the companions and partakers of the disasters and disappointments

which it was probable he had to encounter. Tradition further says,

as preserved in the manuscripts of Aubrey, that "he was wont to go

to his native country once a yeare[414:A];" and Mr. Oldys, in his

collections for a life of our author, repeats this report with an

additional circumstance, remarking, "if tradition may be trusted,

Shakspeare often baited at the Crown Inn or Tavern in Oxford, in his

journey to and from London."[414:B] It is true that these traditions,

if insulated from other circumstances, might merely prove that he

visited the place of his birth annually, without necessarily inferring

that his family was also resident there; but if we consult the

parish-register of Stratford, their testimony will indeed be strong,

and powerfully confirm the deduction; for it appears on that record

that, merely including his children, there is a succession of baptisms,

marriages, and deaths in his family at Stratford, from the year 1583

to 1616.[414:C] This evidence, so satisfactory in itself, will be

strengthened when we recollect that the poet in his mortgage, dated

the 10th of March, 1612-13, is described as William Shakspeare of

_Stratford-upon-Avon_, gentleman; and that by his contemporaries he

was frequently stiled the _Sweet Swan of Avon_, designations which,

when combined with the testimony already adduced, must be considered as

implying the family-residence of the poet.[415:A]

It was this concatenation of circumstances which induced Mr. Chalmers,

than whom a more indefatigable enquirer with regard to our author has

not existed, to conclude that Shakspeare had no "fixed residence in

the metropolis," nor "ever considered London, as his home[415:B];" but

had "resolved that his wife and family should remain through life"

at Stratford, "though he himself made frequent excursions to London,

the scene of his profit, and the theatre of his fame[415:C];" adding,

in a note, that the evidence from the parish-register of Stratford

had compelled even _scepticism_ to admit his position to be _very

probable_.[415:D]

While discussing this subject in his first Apology, he has introduced

a novel and most curious fact, for the purpose of guarding the

reader against an apparently opposing, but too hasty inference. "If

documents," he observes, "be produced to prove, that _one_ Shakspeare,

a player, resided in St. Saviour's parish, Southwark, at the end of the

sixteenth, or the beginning of the seventeenth, century, this evidence

will not be conclusive proof of the settled residence of Shakspeare:

For, it is a fact, as new, as it is curious, that his brother Edmond,

who was baptized on the 3d of May, 1580, became a _player_ at _the

Globe_; lived in St. Saviour's; and was buried in _the church_ of

that parish: the entry in the register being without a blur; '1607

December 31, (was buried) _Edmond Shakespeare_, a _player_, in the

church;' there can be no dispute about the date, or the name, or the

_profession_. It is remarkable, that the parish-clerk, who scarcely

ever mentions any other distinction of the deceased, than a _man_, or a

_woman_, should, by I know not what inspiration, have recorded Edmond

Shakespeare, as a _player_. There were, consequently, two Shakspeares

on the stage, during the same period; as there were two Burbadges, who

were also brothers, and who acted on the same theatre."[416:A]

Upon the whole, we may with considerable confidence and safety

conclude, that the _family-residence_ of Shakspeare was _always_ at

Stratford; that he himself originally went _alone_ to London, and

that he spent the greater part of every year there _alone_, annually,

however, and probably for some months, returning to the bosom of his

family, and that this alternation continued until he finally left the

capital.

Having disposed of this question, another, even still more doubtful,

immediately follows, with regard to the employment and mode of life

which the poet was compelled to adopt on reaching the metropolis. Mr.

Rowe, recording the consequences of the prosecution in Warwickshire,

observes,—"It is at _this time_, and upon _this accident_, that he

is said to have made his _first acquaintance in the play-house_. He

was received into the company then in being, at first in a _very mean

rank_."[416:B]

From this passage we may in the first place infer, that Shakspeare

_immediately_ on his arrival in town, applied to the theatre for

support; an expedient to which there is reason to suppose he was

induced, by a previous connection or acquaintance with one or more of

the performers. It appears, indeed, from the researches of Mr. Malone,

that the probability of his being known, even while at Stratford,

to Heminge, Burbadge, and Thomas Greene, all of them celebrated

comedians of their day, is very considerable. "I suspect," remarks

this acute commentator, "that both he (namely, John Heminge,) and

Burbadge were Shakspeare's countrymen, and that Heminge was born at

Shottery, a village in Warwickshire, at a very small distance from

Stratford-upon-Avon; where Shakspeare found his wife. I find two

families of this name settled in that town early in the reign of Queen

Elizabeth. Elizabeth, the daughter of _John Heming_ of Shottery, was

baptized at Stratford-upon-Avon, March 12. 1567. This John might have

been the father of the actor, though I have found no entry relative

to his baptism: for he was probably born before the year 1558, when

the Register commenced. In the village of Shottery also lived _Richard

Hemyng_, who had a son christened by the name of John, March 7. 1570.

Of the Burbadge family the only notice I have found, is, an entry in

the Register of the parish of Stratford, October 12. 1565, on which

day Philip Green was married in that town to Ursula _Burbadge_, who

might have been sister to James Burbadge, the father of the actor,

whose marriage I suppose to have taken place about that time. If this

conjecture be well founded, our poet, we see, had an easy introduction

to the theatre."[417:A]

The same remark which concludes this paragraph is repeated by the

commentator when speaking of _Thomas Greene_, whom he terms, a

_celebrated comedian_, the _townsman_ of Shakspeare, and perhaps

his _relation_.[417:B] The celebrity of Greene as an actor is fully

ascertained by an address to the reader, prefixed by Thomas Heywood

to his edition of John Cook's _Greens Tu Quoque; or, The City

Gallant_; "as for Maister Greene," says Heywood, "all that I will

speak of him (and that without flattery) is this (if I were worthy

to censure) there was not an actor of his nature, in his time, of

better ability in performance of what he undertook, more applauded

by the audience, of greater grace at the court, or of more general

love in the city[418:A];" but the townsmanship and affinity rest only

on the inference to be drawn from an entry in the parish-register of

Stratford, and from some lines quoted by Chetwood from the comedy of

the _Two Maids of Moreclack_, which represent Greene speaking in the

character of a clown, and declaring

"I pratled poesie in my nurse's arms,

And, born, where late our swan of Avon sung,

In Avon's streams we both of us have lav'd,

And both came out together."[418:B]

As these lines are not, however, in the play from which they are

pretended to have been taken; as they appear to be a parody on a

passage in Milton's Lycidas, and as Chetwood has been detected in

falsifying and forging many of his dates, little credit can be attached

to their evidence, and we must solely depend upon the import of the

register, which records that _Thomas Greene, ALIAS SHAKSPERE, was

buried there, March 6th, 1589_.[418:C] If this Thomas were the father

of the actor, and the probability of this being the case cannot be

denied, and may even have led to the attempted imposition of Chetwood,

the affinity, as well as the townsmanship, will be established.[418:D]

It seems, therefore, neither rash nor inconsequent to believe,

in failure of more direct evidence, that the channel through

which Shakspeare, immediately on his arrival in town, procured an

introduction to the stage, was first opened by his relationship to

Greene, who possessing, as we have seen, great merit and influence

as an actor, could easily insure him a connection at the theatre,

and would naturally recommend him to his countryman Heminge, who was

then about thirty years of age, and had already acquired considerable

reputation as a performer.[418:E]

Mr. Rowe's _second_ assertion that he was received into the company,

then in being, at first in a _very mean rank_, has given rise to some

reports relative to the nature of his early employment at the theatre,

which are equally inconsistent and degrading. It has been related

that his first office was that of _Call-boy_, or attendant on the

prompter, and that his business was to give notice to the performers

when their different entries on the stage were required.[419:A]

Another tradition, which places him in a still meaner occupation,

is said to have been transmitted through the medium of Sir William

Davenant to Mr. Betterton, who communicated it to Mr. Rowe, and this

gentleman to Mr. Pope, by whom, according to Dr. Johnson, it was

related in the following terms:—"In the time of Elizabeth, coaches

being yet uncommon, and hired coaches not at all in use, those who

were too proud, too tender, or too idle to walk, went on horseback

to any distant business or diversion. Many came on horseback to the

play, and when Shakspeare fled to London from the terror of a criminal

prosecution, his first expedient was to wait at the door of the

play-house, and hold the horses of those that had no servants, that

they might be ready again after the performance. In this office he

became so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that in a short time

every man as he alighted called for Will. Shakspeare, and scarcely any

other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will. Shakspeare could be

had. This was the first dawn of better fortune. Shakspeare, finding

more horses put into his hand than he could hold, hired boys to wait

under his inspection, who, when Will. Shakspeare was summoned, were

immediately to present themselves, _I am Shakspeare's boy, Sir_. In

time, Shakspeare found higher employment: but as long as the practice

of riding to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the horses

retained the appellation of _Shakspeare's boys_."[419:B]

Of this curious anecdote it should not be forgotten, that it made

its _first_ appearance in Cibber's Lives of the Poets[419:C]; and

that if it were known to Mr. Rowe, it is evident he thought it so

little entitled to credit that he chose not to risque its insertion

in his life of the poet. In short, if we reflect for a moment that

Shakspeare, though he fled from Stratford to avoid the severity of a

prosecution, could not be destitute either of money or friends, as the

necessity for that flight was occasioned by an imprudent ebullition

of wit, and not by any serious delinquency; that the father of his

wife was a yeoman both of respectability and property; that his own

parent, though impoverished, was still in business; and that he had, in

all likelihood, a ready admission to the stage through the influence

of persons of leading weight in its concerns; we cannot, without

doing the utmost violence to probability, conceive that, under these

circumstances, and in the twenty-third year of his age, he would submit

to the degrading employment of either a _horse-holder_ at the door of a

theatre, or of a _call-boy_ within its walls.

Setting aside, therefore, these idle tales, we may reasonably conclude

that by the phrase _a very mean rank_, Mr. Rowe meant to imply, that

his first engagement as an _actor_ was in the performance of characters

of the lowest class. That his fellow-comedians were ushered into the

dramatic world in a similar way, and rose to higher occupancy by

gradation, the history of the stage will sufficiently prove: Richard

Burbadge, for instance, who began his career nearly at the same time

with our author, and who subsequently became the greatest tragedian

of his age, had, in the year 1589, appeared in no character more

important than that of _a Messenger_.[420:A] If this were the case with

a performer of such acknowledged merit, we may readily acquiesce in the

supposition that the parts first given to Shakspeare were equally as

insignificant; and as readily allow that an actor thus circumstanced

might very properly be said to have been admitted into the company _at

first in a very mean rank_.

As Shakspeare's _immediate_ employment, therefore, on his arrival in

town, appears to have been that of an _actor_, it cannot be deemed

irrelevant if we should here enquire into his merits and success in

this department.

Two traditions, of a contradictory complexion, have reached us relative

to Shakspeare's powers as an actor; one on the authority of Mr. Aubrey,

and the other on that of Mr. Rowe. In the manuscript papers of the

first of these gentlemen, we are told that our author, "being inclined

naturally to poetry and acting, came to London,—and was an actor at

one of the play-houses, and _did act exceedingly well_[421:A];" but, in

the life of the poet by the second, it is added, after mentioning his

admission to the theatre in an inferior rank, that "his admirable wit,

and the natural turn of it to the stage, soon distinguished him, _if

not as an extraordinary actor_, yet as an excellent writer. His name is

printed, as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other

players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of

what sort of parts he used to play; and though I have enquired, I could

never meet with any further account of him this way, than _that the top

of his performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet_."[421:B]

Of descriptions thus opposed, a preference only can be given as founded

on other evidence; and it happens that subsequent enquiry has enabled

us to consider Mr. Aubrey's account as approximating nearest to the

truth.

Contemporary authority, it is evident, would decide the question, and

happily the researches of Mr. Malone have furnished us with a testimony

of this kind. In the year 1592, Henry Chettle, a dramatic writer,

published a posthumous work of Robert Greene's, under the title of

"Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance,"

in which the author speaks harshly of Marlowe, and still more so of

Shakspeare, who was then rising into fame. Both these poets were

justly offended, and Chettle, who was of course implicated in their

displeasure, printed, in the December of the same year, a pamphlet,

entitled _Kind Harts Dreame_, to which is prefixed an address _to

the Gentlemen Readers_, apologizing, in the following terms, for the

offence which he had given:

"About three months since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many papers

in sundry booksellers' hands, among others his _Groatsworth of Wit_,

in which a letter written to divers play-makers is offensively by

one or two of them taken; and because on the dead they cannot be

re-avenged, they wilfully forge in their conceites a living author: and

after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must light on me. How I

have, all the time of my conversing in printing, hindered the bitter

inveighing against schollers, it hath been very well known; and how in

that I dealt, I can sufficiently prove. With _neither_ of them that

take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them ('Marlowe') I care

not if I never be. The other ('Shakspeare'), whom at that time I did

not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated

the hate of living writers, and might have used my own discretion,

(especially in such a case, the author being dead,) that I did not,

I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault; because

_myselfe have seene his demeanour no less civil than he EXCELLENT IN

THE QUALITIE HE PROFESSES. Besides, divers of worship have reported his

uprightness of dealing, which argues his honestie, and his facetious

grace in writing, that approves his art._ For the first, whose learning

I reverence, and at the perusing of Greene's booke, strooke out what

then in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ; or had it

been true, yet to publish it was intollerable; him I would wish to use

me no worse than I deserve."[422:A]

This curious passage clearly evinces that our author was deemed

EXCELLENT as an actor, (for the phrase _the qualitie he professes_

peculiarly denoted at that time the profession of a player,) in the

year 1592, only five or six years, at most, after he had entered on

the stage; and consequently that the information which Aubrey had

received was correct, while that obtained by Rowe must be considered as

unfounded.

So well instructed, indeed, was Shakspeare in the duties and qualities

of an _actor_, that it appears from Downes' book, entitled _Roscius

Anglicanus_, that he undertook to teach and perfect John Lowin in the

character of King Henry the Eighth, and Joseph Taylor in that of Hamlet.

Of his competency for this task, several parts of his dramatic works

might be brought forward as sufficient proof. Independent of his

celebrated instructions to the player in Hamlet, which would alone

ascertain his intimate knowledge of the histrionic art, his conception

of the powers necessary to form the accomplished tragedian, may be

drawn from part of a dialogue which occurs between _Richard the Third_

and _Buckingham_:—

"_Glo._ Come, cousin, _can'st thou quake and change thy colour?

Murther thy breath in middle of a word?

And then again begin, and stop again,

As if thou wert distraught, and mad with terror?_

_Buck._ Tut, I can counterfeit the _deep tragedian_;

Speak, and look big, and _pry on every side,

Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,

Intending deep suspicion: ghastly looks

Are at my service, like enforced smiles_."[423:A]

It would be highly interesting to be able to point out what were the

characters which Shakspeare performed, either in his own plays, or

in those of other writers; but the information which we have on this

subject is, unfortunately, very scanty. Mr. Rowe has mentioned, as the

sole result of his enquiries, that the _Ghost_ in _Hamlet_ was his

_chef d'oeuvre_. That this part, however, in the opinion of the poet,

required some skill and management in the execution, is evident from

the expressions attributed to Hamlet, who exclaims, on the appearance

of the Royal spectre, during the interview between himself and his

mother,—

—————— "Look you how pale he glares!

His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,

Would make them capable. Do not _look upon me_,

Lest with _this piteous action_, you convert

My stern effects;"[424:A]

a description, which, there is reason to suppose, the author would

not have ventured to introduce, unless he had been conscious of the

possession of powers capable of doing justice to his own delineation.

Another tradition, preserved by Mr. Oldys, and communicated to him,

as Mr. Malone thinks[424:B], by Mr. Thomas Jones of Tarbick, in

Worcestershire, whom we have formerly mentioned, imports, as corrected

by the commentator just mentioned, that a _relation_ of the poet's,

then in advanced age, but who in his youth had been in the habit of

visiting London for the purpose of seeing him act in some of his own

plays, told Mr. Jones[424:C], that he had a faint recollection "of

having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein

being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and

appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced

to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he

was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung

a song."[424:D] That this part was the character of _Adam_, in _As

You Like It_, there can be no doubt, and if we add, that, from the

arrangement of the names of the actors and of the persons of the drama,

prefixed to Ben Jonson's play of _Every Man in his Humour_, first acted

in 1598, there is reason to imagine that he performed the part of Old

Knowell in that comedy, we may be warranted probably in drawing the

conclusion, that the representation of aged characters was peculiarly

his forte.

It appears also, from the first four lines of a small poem, written

by John Davies, about the year 1611, and inscribed, _To our English

Terence, Mr. William Shakespeare_, that our bard had been accustomed to

perform _kingly parts_;

"Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,

Hadst thou not play'd some _kingly parts_ in sport,

Thou hadst been a companion for a king,

And been a king among the meaner sort;"[425:A]

a passage which leads us to infer, that several of the regal characters

in his own plays, perhaps the parts of King Henry the Eighth, King

Henry the Sixth, and King Henry the Fourth, may have been appropriated

to him, as adapted to the general estimate of his powers in acting.

From the notices thus collected, it will be perceived, that Shakspeare

attempted not the performance of characters of the first rank; but

that in the representation of those of a second-rate order, to which

he modestly confined his exertions, he was deemed _excellent_. We

have just grounds also for concluding that of the _theory_ of acting

in its very highest departments, he was a complete master; and though

not competent to carry his own precepts into perfect execution, he

was a consummate judge of the attainments and deficiencies of his

fellow-comedians, and was accordingly employed to instruct them in his

own conception of the parts which they were destined to perform.

It may be considered, indeed, as a most fortunate circumstance for the

lovers of dramatic poetry, that our author, in point of execution,

did not attain to the loftiest summit of his profession. He would, in

that case, it is very probable, have either sate down content with the

high reputation accruing to him from this source, or would have found

little time for the labours of composition, and consequently we should

have been in a great degree, if not altogether, deprived of what now

constitute the noblest efforts of human genius.

FOOTNOTES:

[414:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 214.

[414:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 124.—Antony Wood, it appears,

was the original author of this anecdote, for he tells us in his

Athenæ, that John Davenant, who kept the Crown, was "an admirer and

lover of plays and play-makers, especially Shakspeare, _who frequented

his house in his journies between Warwickshire and London_." Ath. Oxon.

vol. ii. p. 292.

[414:C] The Register informs us,—

1st. That his daughter Susanna was baptized there on the 26th May 1583.

2d. That Hamnet and Judith, his twin-son and daughter, were baptized

there the 2d of February 1584.

3d. That his son Hamnet was buried there, on the 11th of August 1596.

4th. That his daughter Susanna was there married to John Hall, on the

5th of June 1607.

5th. That his daughter Judith was there married to Thomas Queeny, on

the 10th of February 1615/16.—Vide Chalmers's Apology, p. 247.

[415:A] Ben Jonson, in his Poem to the Memory of Shakspeare, calls him

"Sweet Swan of Avon;" and Joseph Taylor, who represented the part of

Hamlet in 1596, in the Dedication which he and his fellow-players wrote

for Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, in 1647, speaks of "the flowing

compositions of the then expired _sweet swan of Avon_, Shakspeare."

[415:B] Chalmers's Apology, p. 247.

[415:C] Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 227.

[415:D] Ibid. p. 227. note _d_.

[416:A] Chalmers's Apology, p. 423. note _a_.

[416:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 63.

[417:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 233.

[417:B] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 230.

[418:A] Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 539.

[418:B] British Theatre, p. 9.

[418:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 230. note 1.

[418:D] Vide Malone's Inquiry, p. 94.

[418:E] Mr. Chalmers, speaking of Heminges, says—"There is reason to

believe, that he was, originally, a _Warwickshire lad_; a shire, which

has produced so many players and poets; the Burbadges; the Shakspeares;

the Greens; and the Harts." Apology, p. 435, 436.

[419:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 63. note 2.

[419:B] Ibid. p. 120.

[419:C] Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 130.

[420:A] Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 158. note _n_.

[421:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 213.

[421:B] Ibid. vol. i. p. 64.

[422:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 237, 238.

[423:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xiv. p. 403, 404. Act iii. sc. 5.

[424:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 249, 250. Act iii. sc. 4.

[424:B] Ibid. vol. i. p. 128. note 1.

[424:C] "Mr. Jones's informer," observes Mr. Malone, "might have been

Mr. Richard Quincy, who lived in London, and died at Stratford in 1656,

at the age of 69; or Mr. Thomas Quincy, our poet's son-in-law, who

lived, I believe, till 1663, and was twenty-seven years old when his

father-in-law died; or some one of the family of Hathaway. Mr. Thomas

Hathaway, I believe Shakspeare's brother-in-law, died at Stratford in

1654-5, at the age of 85."—Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 128. note 1.

[424:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 129, 130.

[425:A] The Scourge of Folly, by John Davies of Hereford, no date.

CHAPTER II.

SHAKSPEARE COMMENCES A WRITER OF POETRY, PROBABLY ABOUT

THE YEAR 1587, BY THE COMPOSITION OF HIS VENUS AND

ADONIS—HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF POLITE LITERATURE DURING THE AGE

OF SHAKSPEARE.

As the first object of Shakspeare must necessarily have been, from the

confined nature of his circumstances, to procure employment, it is

highly reasonable to conclude that he at first contented himself with

the diligent discharge of those duties which fell to his share as an

actor of inferior rank. That these, however, were calculated to absorb,

for any length of time, a mind so active, ample, and creative, cannot

for a moment be credited; and, indeed, we are warranted, by every fair

inference, to assert, that, no sooner did he consider his situation at

the theatre of Blackfriars as tolerably secured, than he immediately

directed his powers to the cultivation of his favourite art—that of

poetry.

Of his inclination to this elegant branch of literature, we have

an early proof, in the mode of retaliation which he adopted, in

consequence of his prosecution by Sir Thomas Lucy; and that the Venus

and Adonis, "the first heir of his invention," as he terms it, was

commenced, not long subsequent to this period, and shortly after his

arrival in town, a little enquiry will induce us to consider as an

almost established fact.

It has, indeed, been surmised, by a very intelligent critic, that

this poem may have been written while its author "felt the powerful

incentive of love," and consequently "before he had sallied from

Stratford;" "certainly," he adds, "before he was known to [426:A]fame."

The first suggestion we may dismiss as a _mere_ supposition; the second

must be acknowledged as founded on truth.

All the commentators agree in fixing on the year 1591, as the

LATEST period for our author's commencement as a _dramatic poet_: for

this obvious reason, that both Greene and Chettle have mentioned him as

a writer of plays in 1592, and in such a manner, likewise, as proves

that he was _even then_ possessed of some degree of _notoriety_, the

latter mentioning his "_facetious grace in writing_," and the former,

after calling him, "_an upstart crow beautified with our feathers_,"

and parodying a line from the Third Part of King Henry VI., concludes

by telling us, that he "_is in his own conceit the only SHAKE-SCENE

in the country_;" circumstances which have naturally induced the most

sagacious critics on our bard to infer, that, thus early to have

excited so much envy as this railing accusation evinces, he must

without doubt have been a corrector and improver of plays anterior to

1590, and very probably in 1589.

Now, though the first edition of the Venus and Adonis was not

_published_ until 1593, yet the author's positive declaration, that it

was "_the first heir of his invention_," necessarily implies that its

_composition_ had taken place prior to any poetical attempts for the

stage; and as we have seen, that his arrival in town could not have

occurred before 1586; that he was then immediately employed as an actor

in a very inferior rank; and that his earliest efforts as a dramatic

poet may be attributed to the year 1589 or 1590, it will follow, as a

legitimate deduction, if we allow the space of a twelvemonth for his

settlement at the theatre, that the composition of this poem, "the

first heir of his invention," must be given to the interval elapsing

between the years 1587 and 1590, a period not too extended, the nature

of his other engagements being considered, for the completion of a poem

very nearly amounting to twelve hundred lines.

Having thus conducted Shakspeare to his entrance on the career of

authorship and fame, it will now be necessary, in conformity with our

plan, to take a general and cursory survey of LITERATURE, as it

existed in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. The remainder of this

chapter will therefore be devoted to a broad outline on this subject,

reserving, however, the topics of Romance and Miscellaneous Poetry,

for distinct and immediately subsequent consideration, as these will

form an apposite prelude to an estimate of the patronage which our

author enjoyed, to a critique on his poems, and to critical notices

of contemporary _miscellaneous_ poets, enquiries which, while they

embrace, in one view, the merits of Shakspeare as a _miscellaneous_

poet, are, at the same time, in their preliminary and collateral

branches, in some degree preparatory to his introduction as a

_dramatic_ writer; preparatory also to a sketch of the manners,

customs, and diversions of the metropolis, during his age, and to a

discussion of his transcendent powers as the bard of fancy and of

nature.

The literary period of which we are proceeding to give a slight

sketch, may be justly considered as the most splendid in our annals;

for in what equal portion of our history can we bring forward three

such mighty names as _Spenser_, _Bacon_, and _Shakspeare_, each, in

their respective departments, remaining without a rival. As the field,

however, is so ample that even to do justice to an outline will require

much attention to arrangement, it will be necessary to distribute

what we have to offer, in this stage of our work, under the heads of

_Bibliography_, _Philology_, _Criticism_, _History_, General, Local,

and Personal, and _Miscellaneous Literature_; premising that as we

confine ourselves, in the strictest sense, to _elegant_ literature,

or what has been termed the _Belles Lettres_, science, theology, and

politics, will, of course, be excluded.

Literature, which had for some centuries been confined to ecclesiastics

and scholars by profession, was, at the commencement of Elizabeth's

reign, thrown open to the higher classes of general society. The

example was given by the Queen herself; and the nobility, the superior

orders of the gentry, and even their wives and daughters, became

enthusiasts in the cause of letters. The novelty which attended these

studies, the eager desire to possess what had been so long studiously

and jealously concealed, and the curiosity to explore and rifle the

treasures of the Greek and Roman world, which mystery and imagination

had swelled into the marvellous, contributed to excite an absolute

passion for study, and for books. The court, the ducal castle, and

the baronial hall, were suddenly converted into academies, and could

boast of splendid libraries, as well as of splendid tapestries. In the

first of these, according to Ascham, might be seen the Queen reading

"more _Greeke_ every day, than some prebendarie of this church doth

read _Latin_ in a whole week[429:A]," and while she was translating

Isocrates or Seneca, it may be easily conceived that her maids of

honour found it convenient to praise and to adopt the disposition of

her time. In the second, observes Warton, the daughter of a duchess was

taught not only to distil strong waters, but to construe Greek[429:B];

and in the third, every young lady who aspired to be fashionable was

compelled, in imitation of the greater world, to exhibit similar marks

of erudition.

If such were the studious manners of the ladies, it will readily be

credited, that an equal, if not a greater attachment to literature

existed in the other sex; in short, an intimacy with Greek, Latin,

and Italian, was deemed essential to the character of the nobleman

and the courtier; and learning was thus rendered a passport to

promotion and rank. That this is not an exaggerated statement, but

founded on contemporary authority, will be evident from a passage

in Harrison's Description of England, where, after delineating the

court, he adds,—"This further is not to be omitted, to the singular

commendation of both sorts and sexes of our courtiers here in England,

that there are verie few of them, which have not the use and skill

of sundrie speaches, beside an excellent veine of writing before

time not regarded.—Trulie it is a rare thing with us now, to heare

of a courtier which hath but his owne language. And to saie how many

gentlewomen and ladies there are, that beside sound knowledge of the

Greeke and Latine toongs, are thereto no lesse skilfull in the Spanish,

Italian, and French, or in some one of them, it resteth not in me:

sith I am persuaded, that as the noblemen and gentlemen do surmount

in this behalfe, so these come verie little or nothing at all behind

them for their parts, which industrie God continue, and accomplish

that which otherwise is wanting!" Again, a few lines below, he remarks

of the ladies of the court, that some of them employ themselves "in

continuall reading either of the holie scriptures, or histories of our

owne or forren nations about us, and diverse in writing volumes of

their owne, or translating of other mens into our English and Latine

toongs[430:A];" employments which now appear to us very extraordinary

as the daily occupations of a court, but were, then, the natural result

of that ardent love of letters, which had somewhat suddenly been

diffused through the higher classes.

Were we, however, to conclude, that the same erudite taste pervaded the

bulk of the people, or even the middle orders of society, we should

be grossly mistaken. Literature, though cultivated with enthusiasm in

the metropolis, was confined even there to persons of high rank, or to

those who were subservient to their education and amusement. In the

country, to read and write were still esteemed rare accomplishments,

and among the rural gentry of not the first degree, little difference,

in point of literary information, was perceptible between the master

and his menial attendant. Of this several of the plays of Shakspeare

and Jonson will afford evidence, especially the comedies of the _Merry

Wives of Windsor_, and _Every Man in his Humour_, to which a striking

proof may be added from Burton, who wrote just at the close of the

Shaksperian [430:B]period; and, in treating of study, as a cause of

melancholy, says, "I may not deny, but that we have a sprinkling of

our Gentry, here, and there one, excellently well learned;—but they

are but few in respect of the multitude, the major part (and some

again excepted, that are indifferent) are wholly bent for Hawks and

Hounds, and carried away many times with intemperate lust, gaming, and

drinking. If they read a book at any time, 'tis an English Chronicle,

Sir Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c. a play-book, or some pamphlet

of News, and that at such seasons only, when they cannot stir abroad,

to drive away time, their sole discourse is dogs, hawks, horses, and

what News? If some one have been a traveller in Italy, or as far as the

Emperour's Court, wintered in Orleance, and can court his mistris in

broken French, wear his clothes neatly in the newest fashion, sing some

choice out-landish tunes, discourse of lords, ladies, towns, palaces,

and cities, he is compleat and to be admired: otherwise he and they

are much at one; _no difference betwixt the master and the man_, but

worshipful titles: wink and choose betwixt him that sits down (clothes

excepted) and him that holds the trencher behind him."[431:A]

It is to the court, therefore, and its attendants, to the nobility,

higher gentry, and their preceptors, that we are to look for that

ardent love of books and learning which so remarkably distinguished

the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and which was destined, in another

century, to descend into, and illuminate the larger masses of our

population. Nothing, indeed, can more forcibly paint Elizabeth's

passion for books and learning, than a passage in Harrison's unadorned

but faithful description of her court:—"Finallie," says that

interesting pourtrayer of ancient manners, "to avoid idlenesse, and

prevent sundrie transgressions, otherwise likelie to be committed and

doone, such order is taken, that everie office hath either a bible, or

the booke of the acts and monuments of the church of England, or both,

beside some histories and chronicles lieing therein, for the exercise

of such as come into the same: _whereby the stranger that entereth into

the court of England upon the sudden, shall rather imagine himselfe to

come into some publike schoole of the universities, where manie give

eare to one that readeth, than into a princes palace, if you conferre

the same with those of other nations_. Would to God all honorable

personages would take example of hir graces godlie dealing in this

behalfe, and shew their conformitie unto these hir so good beginnings!

which if they would, then should manie grievous offenses (wherewith

God is highlie displeased) be cut off and restrained, which now doo

reigne exceedinglie, in most noble and gentlemen's houses, whereof

they see no paterne within hir graces gates."[432:A] Well might Mr.

Dibdin apostrophize this learned Queen in the following picturesque

and characteristic terms:—"All hail to the sovereign, who, bred up

in severe habits of reading and meditation, loved books and scholars

to the very bottom of her heart! I consider ELIZABETH as a royal

bibliomaniac of transcendant fame!—I see her, in imagination, wearing

her favorite little _Volume of Prayers_[432:B], the composition of

Queen Catharine Parr, and Lady Tirwit, 'bound in solid gold, and

hanging by a gold chain at her side,' at her morning and evening

devotions—afterwards, as she became firmly seated upon her throne,

taking an interest in the embellishments of the _Prayer Book_[432:C],

which goes under her own name; and then indulging her strong

bibliomaniacal appetites in fostering the institution for the erecting

of _a Library, and an Academy for the study of Antiquities and

History_."[432:D]

The example of Elizabeth, whose taste for books had been fostered

under the tuition of Ascham, was speedily followed by some of the first

characters in the kingdom; but by none with more ardent zeal then by

Archbishop Parker, who was such an indefatigable admirer and collector

of curious and precious books, and of every thing that appertained

to them, that, according to Strype, he kept constantly in his house

"drawers of pictures, wood-cutters, painters, limners, writers, and

book-binders,—one of these was _Lylye_, an excellent writer, that

could counterfeit any antique writing. Him the archbishop customarily

used to make old books compleat."[433:A] No expense, in short, was

spared, by this amiable and accomplished divine, in procuring the most

rare and valuable articles; his library was daily increased through

the medium of numerous agents, whom he employed, both at home and

abroad, and among these was Batman the author of the _Doome_ and the

commentator _uppon Bartholome_, who, we are told, purchased for him not

less than 6700 books "in the space of no more than four years."[433:B]

To Parker succeeded the still more celebrated names of _Sir Robert

Cotton_ and _Sir Thomas Bodley_, men to whom the nation is indebted

for two of the most extensive and valuable of its public libraries.

The enthusiasm which animated these illustrious characters in their

bibliographical researches is almost incredible, and what gives an

imperishable interest to their biography is, that their morals were as

pure as their literary zeal was glowing.

Sir Thomas Bodley was singularly fortunate in the selection of _Dr.

Thomas James_ for the keeper of his library, whom Camden terms _vir

eruditus, et vere_ φιλόβιβλος[433:C], and of whom Fuller says, that

"on serious consideration one will conclude the Library made for _him_,

and _him_ for it, like _tallies_ they so fitted one another. Some men

live like mothes in libraries, not being better for the books, but the

books the worse for them, which they only soile with their fingers. Not

so Dr. James, who made use of books for his own and the publique good.

He knew the age of a manuscript, by looking upon the face thereof, and

by the form of the character could conclude the time wherein it was

written."[434:A]

Among the lovers and collectors of curious books, during the reign of

Elizabeth, may be mentioned Dr. JOHN DEE, notorious for his magical and

astrological lore, and who, according to his own account, possessed a

library of "four thousand volumes, printed and unprinted, bound and

unbound, valued at 2000_l._," beside numerous boxes and cases of very

rare evidences Irish and Welsh[434:B]; and _Captain Cox of Coventry_,

whose boudoir of romances and ballads we shall have occasion to notice,

at some length, in the succeeding chapter.

It is remarkable that the two sovereigns included in the era of

Shakspeare, should have felt an equally unbounded inclination to study

and to books. So attached was James to bibliothecal delights, that

when he visited the Bodleian Library in 1605, he is said by Burton

to have exclaimed on his departure, "_if it were so that I must be a

prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other

prison than this library, and to be chained together with so many

good authors_."[434:C] Burton himself was one of the most inveterate

bibliomaniacs of his day; Hearne tells us that he was a collector of

"ancient popular little pieces," which, together with a multitude of

books of the best kind, he gave to the Bodleian Library.[434:D] In the

preface to his curious folio, he speaks of his eyes aking with reading,

and his fingers with turning the leaves[434:E]; and in the body of

his work, under the article of study, he expatiates, in the highest

strain of enthusiasm, on the luxury of possessing numerous books: "we

have thousands of authors of all sorts," he observes; "many great

libraries full well furnished, like so many dishes of meat, served out

for several palates: and he is a very block that is affected with

none of them.—I could even live and dye with—and take more delight,

true content of mind in them, than thou hast in all thy wealth and

sport, how rich soever thou art.——Nicholas Gerbelius, that good old

man, was so much ravished with a few Greek authors restored to light,

with hope and desire of enjoying the rest, that he exclaims forthwith,

Arabibus atque Indis omnibus erimus ditiores, We shall be richer than

all the Arabick or Indian Princes; of such esteem they were with him,

in comparable worth and value."—He then adopts the emphatic language

of _Heinsius_: "_I no sooner come into the Library, but I bolt the door

to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose

nurse is idleness, their mother Ignorance, and Melancholy herself,

and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take

my seat, with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all

our great ones, and rich men that know not this happiness._ I am not

ignorant in the mean time," he adds, "notwithstanding this which I have

said, how barbarously and basely for the most part our _ruder Gentry_

esteem of libraries and books, how they neglect and contemn so great a

treasure, so inestimable a benefit.—For my part I pity these men,—how

much, on the other side, are all we bound that are scholars, to those

munificent _Ptolomies_, bountiful _Mæcenates_, heroical patrons, divine

spirits,—_qui nobis hæc otia fecerunt, Namque erit ille mihi semper

Deus_—that have provided for us so many well furnished libraries

as well in our publick Academies in most cities, as in our private

Colledges? How shall I remember _Sir Thomas Bodley_, amongst the

rest, _Otho Nicholson_, and the right reverend _John Williams_ Lord

Bishop of _Lincolne_, (with many other pious acts) who besides that

at _St. John's_ College in _Cambridge_, that in _Westminster_, is now

likewise in _Fieri_ with a Library at _Lincolne_ (a noble president

for all corporate towns and cities to imitate) _O quam te memorem (vir

illustrissime) quibus elogiis?_"[435:A]

The passion for letters and for books, which was thus diffused among

the higher classes, necessarily occasioned much attention to be paid

to the preservation and decoration of libraries, the volumes of which,

however, were not arranged on the shelves in the manner that we are now

accustomed to see them. The _leaves_, and not the back, were placed

in front, in order to exhibit the _silk strings_ or _golden clasps_

which united the sides of the cover. Thus Bishop Earl, describing the

character of a young gentleman of the University, says,—"His study

has commonly handsome shelves, his books neat silk strings, _which he

shews to his father's man, and is loth to unty or take down for fear of

misplacing_."[436:A]

To the most costly of these embellishments, the _golden clasps_,

Shakspeare has referred, both in a metaphorical and literal sense.

In the _Twelfth Night_ the Duke, addressing the supposed Cesario,

exclaims—

————————— "I have _unclasp'd_

To thee the _book_ even of my secret soul;"[436:B]

and in _Romeo and Juliet_, Lady Capulet observes,

"That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,

That in _gold clasps_ locks in the golden story."[436:C]

It appears, indeed, that the art of ornamenting the exterior of books

was carried, at this period, to a lavish extent, jewels, as well as

gold, being employed to enhance their splendour. Let us listen to the

directions of the judicious Peacham, on this head, a contemporary

authority, who has thought it not unnecessary to subjoin the best mode

of keeping books, and the best scite for a library. "Have a care," says

he, "of keeping your bookes handsome, and well bound, not casting away

over much in their gilding or stringing for ostentation sake, like the

prayer-bookes of girles and gallants, which are carried to Church but

for their out-sides. Yet for your owne use spare them not for noting

or interlining (if they be printed) for it is not likely you meane to

be a gainer by them, when you have done with them: neither suffer them

through negligence to mold and be moath-eaten, or want their strings or

covers.—Suffer them not to lye neglected, who must make you regarded;

and goe in torn coates, who must apparell your mind with the ornaments

of knowledge, above the roabes and riches of the most magnificent

Princes.

"To avoyde the inconvenience of moathes and moldinesse, let your study

be placed, and your windowes open if it may be, towards the East,

for where it looketh South or West, the aire being ever subject to

moisture, moathes are bred and darkishnesse encreased, whereby your

maps and pictures will quickly become pale, loosing their life and

colours, or rotting upon their cloath, or paper, decay past all helpe

and recovery."[437:A]

The interior, also, as well as the exterior, of books, had acquired a

high degree of richness and finishing during the era of which we are

treating. The black-letter, Roman, and Italic, types were, in general,

clear, sharp, and strong, and though the splendid art of illumination

had ceased to be practised, in the sixteenth century, in consequence

of the establishment of printing, the loss was compensated for, by

more correct ornamental capital initials, cut with great taste and

spirit on wood and copper, and by engraved _borders_ and _title-pages_.

Portraits were also frequently introduced in the initials, especially

by the celebrated printers Jugge, and Day, the latter of whom,

patronised by Archbishop Parker, became in his turn the patron of Fox

the martyrologist, in the first edition of whose book, 1563, and in

Day's edition of Dee's _General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the

perfecte Arte of Navigation_, folio, 1577, may be found an admirable

specimen of this style of decoration, the capital initial C including

a portrait of Elizabeth sitting in state, and attended by three of her

ministers.[437:B] A similar mode of costly ornamenture issued from the

presses of Grafton, Whitchurch, Bill, and Barker, and perhaps in no

period of _our_ annals has this species of decorative typography been

carried to a higher state of perfection. Some very grotesque ornaments,

it is true, and some degree of affectation were occasionally exhibited

in title-pages, and to one of the latter class, very common in this

age, Shakspeare alludes in the _Second Part of King Henry IV._, where

Northumberland, describing the approach of a messenger, says,

—— "This man's brow, like to a title-leaf,

Foretells the nature of a tragick volume;"[438:A]

imagery drawn from the custom of printing elegiac poems with the

title-page, and every intermediate leaf, entirely black; but, upon the

whole, valuable books, and especially the Bible, had more splendid and

minutely ornamental finishing bestowed upon their pages, than has since

occurred, in this country, until towards the close of the eighteenth

century.

It had been fortunate, if _accuracy_ in typography had kept pace with

the taste for decoration; but this, with few exceptions, may be said

never to have been the case, and about the termination of Elizabeth's

reign, the era of total incorrectness, as Mr. Steevens remarks,

commenced, when "works of all kinds appeared with the disadvantage

of more than their natural and inherent imperfections[438:B];" an

assertion sufficiently borne out by the state in which the dramatic

poetry of this period was published. It may be added that the

Black-letter continued to be the prevailing type during the days of

Elizabeth, but seems to have nearly deserted the English press before

the demise of her successor.

Of what extent was the Library of Shakspeare, and of what its chief

treasures consisted, can now only be the subject of conjecture. That

he was a lover and collector of books more particularly within the

pale of his own language, and in the range of elegant literature, is

sufficiently evidenced by his own works. A _Bibliotheca Shakspeariana_

may, in fact, be drawn, from the industry of his commentators, who

have sought for, and quoted, almost every book to which he has been

directly or remotely indebted. The disquisitions indeed into which

we are about to enter will pretty accurately point out the species

of books which principally ornamented his shelves, and may preclude

any other remark here, than that the chief wealth of his collection

consisted of Historic, Romantic, and Poetic Literature, in all their

various branches.

_Philological_ or grammatical literature, as applied to the English

language, appears to have made little progress until after the middle

of the sixteenth century. We are told by Roger Ascham in 1544, the

period of the publication of his Toxophilus, that "as for the Latine or

Greeke tongue, everye thinge is so excellentlye done in them, that none

can do better; in the _Englishe_ tongue, contrary, everye thinge in a

maner so meanlye both for the matter and handelinge, that no man can

do worse. For therein the least learned, for the most part, have bene

alwayes most readye to write."[439:A] The Toxophilus of this useful

and engaging writer, was written in his native tongue, with the view

of presenting the public with a specimen of a purer and more correct

_English_ style than that to which they had hitherto been accustomed;

and with the hope of calling the attention of the learned, from the

exclusive study of the Greek and Latin, to the cultivation of their

vernacular language. The result which he contemplated was attained,

and, from the period of this publication, the shackles of Latinity were

broken, and composition in _English_ prose became an object of eager

and successful attention.

Previous to the exertions of Ascham, very few writers can be mentioned

as affording any model for English style. If we except the Translation

of Froissart by Bourchier, Lord Berners, in 1523, and the History

of Richard III. by Sir Thomas More, certainly compositions of great

merit, we shall find it difficult to produce an author of much value

for his vernacular prose. On the contrary, very soon after the

appearance of the Toxophilus, we find harmony and beauty in English

style emphatically praised and enjoined. Thus, in _THE ARTE OF

RHETORIKE for the use of all suche as are studious of Eloquence, sette

forthe in Englishe by THOMAS WILSON_, 1553, we are informed that

many now aspired to write English elegantly. "When we have learned,"

remarks this critic, "usuall and accustomable wordes to set forthe

our meanynge, we ought to joyne them together in apte order, that the

eare maie delite in hearynge the harmonie. I knowe some Englishemen,

that in this poinct have suche a gift in the Englishe as fewe in Latin

have the like; and therefore delite the Wise and Learned so muche

with their pleasaunte composition, that many rejoyce when thei maie

heare suche, and thinke muche learnyng is gotte when thei maie talke

with them."[440:A] The _Treatise_ of Wilson powerfully assisted the

cause which Ascham had been advocating; it displays much sagacity

and good sense, and greatly contributed to clear the language from

the affectation consequent on the introduction of foreign words and

idiom. The licentiousness, in this respect, was carried, indeed,

at this time, to such a height, that those who affected more than

ordinary refinement, either in conversation or writing, so Italianated

or Latinized their English, as to be scarcely intelligible to the

common people. Wilson severely satirizes this absurd practice. "Some,"

says he, "seke so farre for outlandishe Englishe, that they forget

altogether their mother's language. And I dare sweare this, if some of

their mothers were alive, thei were not able to tel what thei saie: and

yet these fine Englishe clerkes wil saie thei speake in their mother

tongue, if a man should charge them for counterfeityng the kinges

Englishe.—He that cometh lately out of Fraunce, will talke Frenche

Englishe, and never blushe at the matter. Another choppes in with

Englishe Italianated, and applieth the Italian phraise to our Englishe

speakyng.—The unlearned or folishe phantasticall, that smelles but

of learnyng (suche fellowes as have seene learned men in their daies)

will so Latine their tongues, that the simple cannot but wonder at

their talke, and thinke surely thei speake by some revelacion. I know

them, that thinke Rhetorike to stande wholie upon darke wordes; and he

that can catche an ynkehorne terme by the taile, hym thei compt to be

a fine Englishman and a good rhetorician." He then adds a specimen of

this style from a letter "devised by a Lincolneshire man for a voide

benefice," addressed to the Lord Chancellor:—"Ponderyng, expendyng,

and revolutyng with myself, your ingent affabilitie, and ingenious

capacitie, for mundane affaires, I cannot but celebrate and extoll

your magnificall dexteritie above all other. For how could you have

adapted suche illustrate prerogative, and dominiall superioritie, if

the fecunditie of your ingenie had not been so fertile and wonderfull

pregnaunt, &c."[441:A] That the same species of pedantry continued

to prevail in 1589, we have the testimony of Puttenham, who, in his

chapter _Of Language_, observes that "we finde in our English writers

many wordes and speaches amendable, and ye shall see in some many

_inkhorne_ termes so ill affected brought in by men of learning as

preachers and schoole-masters: and many straunge termes of other

languages by Secretaries and Marchaunts and travailours, and many darke

wordes and not usual nor well sounding, though they be dayly spok in

Court."[441:B]

Before Puttenham, however, had published, another and a still more

dangerous mode of corruption had infected English composition. In

1581, John Lilly, a dramatic poet, published a Romance in two parts,

of which the first is entitled, _Euphues_, The Anatomy of Wit, and

the second, _Euphues and his England_. This production is a tissue

of antithesis and alliteration, and therefore justly entitled to the

appellation of _affected_; but we cannot with Berkenhout consider

it as a most _contemptible piece of nonsense_.[441:C] The moral is

uniformly good; the vices and follies of the day are attacked with

much force and keenness; there is in it much display of the manners

of the times, and though, as a composition, it is very meretricious,

and sometimes absurd in point of ornament, yet the construction of

its sentences is frequently turned with peculiar neatness and spirit,

though with much monotony of cadence. William Webbe, no mean judge,

speaking of those who had attained a good grace and sweet vein in

eloquence, adds,—"among whom I think there is none that will gainsay

but Master John Lilly hath deserved most high commendations, as he who

hath stepped one step farther therein than any since he first began the

witty discourse of his EUPHUES, whose works surely in respect of his

singular eloquence and brave composition of apt words and sentences,

let the learned examine, and make a tryal thereof through all parts

of rhetoric in fit phrases, in pithy sentences, in gallant tropes, in

flowing speech, in plain sense; and surely in my judgment I think he

will yield him that verdict, which Quintilian giveth of both the best

orators, Demosthenes and Tully; that from the one nothing may be taken

away, and to the other nothing may be added[442:A];" an encomium that

was repeated by Nash[442:B], Lodge[442:C], and Meres[442:D], but which

should be contrasted with the sounder opinion of Drayton, who, in his

Epistle of Poets and Poesy, mentioning the noble Sidney,

"That heroe for numbers and for prose,"

observes that he

——— "thoroughly pac'd our language as to show

The plenteous English hand in hand might go

With Greek and Latin, and did first reduce

Our tongue from _Lilly_'s writing then in use;

Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,

Playing with words, and idle similies,

As th' English apes, and very zanies be

Of every thing, that they do hear and see,

So imitating his ridiculous tricks,

They speak and write, all like mere lunatics."[443:A]

Yet the most correct description of the merits and defects of this

once celebrated author has been given by Oldys, in his Librarian, who

remarks that "Lilly was a man of great reading, good memory, ready

faculty of application, and uncommon eloquence; but he ran into a vast

excess of allusion; in sentence and conformity of style he seldom

speaks directly to the purpose, but is continually carried away by

one odd allusion or simile or other (out of natural history, that

is yet fabulous and not true in nature), and that still overborne

by more, thick upon the back of one another; and through an eternal

affectation of sententiousness keeps to such a formal measure of his

periods as soon grows tiresome; and so, by confining himself to shape

his sense so frequently into one artificial cadence, however ingenious

or harmonious, abridges that variety which the style should be admired

for."[443:B]

So greatly was the style of _Euphues_ admired in the court of

Elizabeth, and, indeed, throughout the kingdom, that it became a

proof of refined manners to adopt its phraseology. Edward Blount, who

republished six of Lilly's plays, in 1632, under the title of _Sixe

Court Comedies_, declares that "Our nation are in his debt for a new

English which hee taught them. _Euphues_ and his _England_," he adds,

"began first that language. All our ladies were then his scollers; and

that beautie in court who could not parley Euphuesme, was as little

regarded as shee which now there speakes not French;" a representation

certainly not exaggerated; for Ben Jonson, describing, a fashionable

lady, makes her address her gallant in the following terms:—"O

master Brisk, (as it is in _Euphues_) _hard is the choice when one is

compell'd, either by silence to die with grief, or by speaking, to live

with shame_:" upon which Mr. Whalley observes, that the court ladies in

Elizabeth's time had all the phrases of _Euphues by heart_.[443:C]

Scarcely had corruption from this source ceased to violate the purity

and propriety of our language, when the fashion of interlarding

composition with a perpetual series of Latin quotations commenced; a

custom which continued until the close of the reign of James, and gave

to the style of this period a complexion the most heterogeneous and

absurd, being, in fact, composed of two languages, half Latin and half

English. Of this barbarous and pedantic habit, the works of Bishop

Andrews afford the most flagrant instance; an example which, we have

reason to regret, was followed too closely by Robert Burton, who, when

he trusts to his native tongue, has written in a style at once simple

and impressive.

These affectations, arising from the use of _inkhorn terms_, of

_antithesis_, _alliteration_, arbitrary orthography, and the _perpetual

intermixture of Latin phraseology_, have been deservedly and powerfully

ridiculed by Sir Philip Sidney and Shakspeare; by the former under the

character of _Rombus_, a village schoolmaster, in a masque presented

to Her Majesty in Wansted Garden, and by the latter in the person of

HOLOFERNES in _Love's Labour's Lost_. The satire of Sir Philip is

supported with humour; Her Majesty is supposed to have parted, by her

presence, a violent contest between two shepherds for the affection

of the Lady of the May, on which event _Rombus_ comes forward with a

learned oration.

"Now the thunder-thumping _Jove_ transfused his dotes into your

excellent formositie, which have with your resplendent beames thus

segregated the enmity of these rurall animals; I am _Potentissima

Domina_, a Schoole-master, that is to say, a Pedagogue, one not a

little versed in the disciplinating of the juvenall frie, wherin (to my

laud I say it) I use such geometrical proportions, as neither wanted

mansuetude nor correction, for so it is described.

"_Parcare subjectos, et debellire superbos._"

"Yet hath not the pulchritude of my vertues protected me from the

contaminating hands of these Plebeians; for coming _solummodo_, to have

parted their sanguinolent fray, they yeelded me no more reverence,

than if I had been some _Pecorius Asinus_. I, even I, that am, who am

I? _Dixi verbus sapiento satum est._ But what said that Troian _Æneas_,

when he sojourned in the surging sulkes of the sandiferous seas, _Hæc

olim memonasse juvebit_. Well, well, _ad propositos revertebo_, the

puritie of the verity is that a certaine _Pulchra puella profecto_,

elected and constituted by the integrated determination of all this

topographicall region as the soveraigne Ladie of this Dame Maies month,

hath beene _quodammodo_ hunted, as you would say, pursued by two, a

brace, a couple, a cast of young men, to whom the crafty coward _Cupid_

had _inquam_ delivered his dire-dolorous dart;" here the May-Lady

interfering calls him a tedious fool, and dismisses him; upon which in

anger he exclaims,—

"_O Tempori, O Moribus!_ in profession a childe, in dignitie a woman,

in yeares a Ladie, in _cæteris_ a maide, should thus turpifie the

reputation of my doctrine, with the superscription of a foole, _O

Tempori, O Moribus!_"[445:A]

The Schoolmaster of Shakspeare appears, from the researches of

Warburton and Dr. Farmer, to have been intended as a satire upon John

Florio, whose _First Fruits_, or Dialogues in Italian and English, were

published in 1578, his _Second_ in 1591, and his "_Worlde of Wordes_"

in 1598. He was ludicrously pedantic, dogmatic, and assuming, and gave

the first affront to the dramatic poets of his day, by affirming that

"the plaies that they plaie in England, are neither _right comedies_,

nor _right tragedies_; but representations of _histories_ without

any decorum."[445:B] The character of _Holofernes_, however, while

it caricatures the peculiar folly and ostentation of Florio, holds

up to ridicule, at the same time, the general pedantry and literary

affectations of the age; and amongst these very particularly the absurd

innovations which Lilly had introduced. Sir Nathaniel, praising the

specimen of alliteration which Holofernes exhibits in his "extemporal

epitaph," calls it "a rare talent;" upon which the schoolmaster

comments on the compliment in a manner which pretty accurately

describes the fantastic genius of the author of Euphues:—"This is a

gift that I have, simple, simple; _a foolish extravagant spirit, full

of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions,

revolutions_: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in

the womb of _pia mater_; and deliver'd upon the mellowing of occasion;"

and subsequently in a strain of good sense not very common from the

mouth of this imperious pedant, he still more definitely points out

the foppery of Lilly both in style and pronunciation,—"He is too

picked," he remarks, "too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were,

too peregrinate, as I may call it.—He draweth out the thread of his

verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical

phantasms, such insociable and point devise companions; such rackers

of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, when he should say, doubt;

det, when he should pronounce, debt; d, e, b, t; not d, e, t: he

clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour, _vocatur_ nebour; neigh,

abbreviated, ne: This is abhominable, (which he would call abominable,)

it insinuateth me of insanie; _Ne intelligis domine?_ to make frantick,

lunatick."[446:A]

Yet, notwithstanding these various attempts, all tending to corrupt the

purity of our language, and originating from the pedantic taste of the

age, and from a love of novelty and over-refinement, English style more

rapidly improved during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, than has

been the case in any previous, or subsequent period of our annals. To

establish this assertion, we have only to appeal to the great writers

of this era, and among these, it will be sufficient to mention the

names of _Ralegh_, _Hooker_, _Bacon_ and _Daniel_, masters of a style,

at once vigorous, perspicuous, and often richly modulated. If to this

brief catalogue, though adequate to our purpose, we add the prose of

_Ascham_, _Sidney_, _Southwell_, _Knolles_, _Hakewell_, and _Peacham_,

still omitting many authors of much merit, it may justly be affirmed,

that no specimens of excellence in dignified and serious composition

could be wanting as exemplars. That the good sense of the age was aware

of the value of these writers, in point of style, though surrounded

by innovations supported by rank and fashion, may be concluded from

the admonitions of Peacham, who in his chapter "Of stile, in speaking

and writing," not only describes the style which ought to be adopted,

but enumerates the authors who have afforded the best examples of

it for the student. "Let your style," he admirably observes, "bee

furnished with solid matter, and compact of the best, choice, and most

familiar words; taking heed of speaking, or writing such words, as men

shall rather admire than understand.—Flowing at one and the selfe

same height, neither taken in and knit up too short, that, like rich

hangings of Arras or Tapistry, thereby lose their grace and beautie,

as Themistocles was wont to say: nor suffered to spread so farre, like

soft Musicke in an open field, whose delicious sweetnesse vanisheth,

and is lost in the ayre.

"To helpe yourselfe herein, make choice of those authors in prose, who

speake the best and purest English. I would commend unto you (though

from more antiquity) the Life of _Richard_ the third, written by _Sir

Thomas Moore_; the _Arcadia_ of the noble _Sir Philip Sidney_, whom Du

Bartas makes one of the foure columnes of our language; the _Essayes_,

and other peeces of the excellent master of eloquence, my Lord of _S.

Albanes_, who possesseth not onely eloquence, but all good learning,

as hereditary both by father and mother. You have then _M. Hooker_,

his _Policy_: _Henry_ the fourth, well written by _S. John Heyward_;

that first part of our English Kings, by _M. Samuel Daniel_. There are

many others I know, but these will tast you best, as proceeding from no

vulgar judgment."[447:A]

With regard to the state of colloquial language during this epoch, it

may safely be asserted, that a reference to the works of Shakspeare

will best acquaint us with the "diction of common life," with the tone

of conversation which prevailed both in the higher and lower ranks

of society; for the dialogue of his most perfect comedies is, by many

degrees, more easy, lively, and perspicuous, than that of any other

contemporary dramatic writer.

It is by no means, however, our wish to infer, from what has been

said in praise of the prose writers of this period, that they are to

be considered as perfect models in the nineteenth century; on the

contrary, it must be confessed, that the best of them exhibit abundant

proofs of quaintness and prolixity, of verbal pedantry and inverted

phraseology; and though the language, through their influence, made

unparalleled strides, and fully unfolded its copiousness, energy, and

strength, it remained greatly deficient in correctness and polish, in

selection of words, and harmony of arrangement.[448:A]

These defects, especially the two latter, are to be attributed, in

a great measure, to philological studies being almost exclusively

confined to the learned languages, a subject of complaint with a few

individuals, who lamented the neglect which this classical enthusiasm

entailed on their native tongue. Thus Arthur Golding, in some verses

prefixed to Baret's Alviarie, after observing that

———————— "all good inditers find

Our Inglishe tung driven almost out of kind,

Dismembred, hacked, maymed, rent and torne,

Defaced, patched, mard, and made a skorne,"

adds with great truth and good sense,

"No doubt but men should shortly find there is

As perfect order, as firm certeintie,

As grounded rules to trie out things amisse,

As much sweete grace, as great varietie

Of wordes and phrazes, as good quantitie

For verse or proze in Inglish every waie,

As any comen language hath this daie.

_And were wée given as well to like our owne,

And for to clense it from the noisome wéede

Of affectation which hath overgrowne

Ungraciously the good and native séede,

As for to borrowe where wée have no néede:

It would pricke néere the learned tungs in strength,

Perchance, and match mée some of them at length._"[449:A]

The ardour for classical acquisition was, at this time, indeed, so

prevalent among the learned and the great, that the mythology as well

as the diction of the ancients became fashionable. The amusements,

and even the furniture of the opulent, their shows, and masques, the

hangings and the tapestries of their houses, and their very cookery,

assumed an erudite, and what would now be termed, a pedantic cast.

"Every thing," says Warton, speaking of this era, "was tinctured

with ancient history and mythology.—When the Queen paraded through

a country town, almost every pageant was a pantheon. When she paid

a visit at the house of any of her nobility, at entering the hall

she was saluted by the Penates, and conducted to her privy-chamber

by Mercury. Even the pastry-cooks were expert mythologists. At

dinner, select transformations of Ovid's metamorphoses were exhibited

in confectionary: and the splendid iceing of an immense historic

plumb-cake, was embossed with a delicious basso-relievo of the

destruction of Troy. In the afternoon, when she condescended to walk

in the garden, the lake was covered with Tritons and Nereids: the

pages of the family were converted into Wood-nymphs, who peeped from

every bower: and the footmen gamboled over the lawns in the figure of

Satyrs."[449:B]

In the course of a few years the same taste descended to the inferior

orders of society, owing to the numerous versions which rapidly

appeared of the best writers of Greece and Rome. The rich catalogue of

translations to which Shakspeare had access, may be estimated from the

very accurate list which is inserted in the Variorum editions of the

poet, and before the death of James the First, not a single classic, we

believe, of any value, remained unfamiliarized to the English reader.

The height which classical learning had attained about the year 1570,

may be estimated from the testimony of Ascham, a most consummate judge,

who, quoting Cicero's assertion with regard to Britain, that "there is

not one scruple of silver in that whole isle; or any one that knoweth

either learnyng or letter[450:A]," thus apostrophizes the Roman Orator:

"But now, master _Cicero_, blessed be God, and his sonne Jesus Christ,

whom you never knew, except it were as it pleased him to lighten

you by some shadow; as covertlie in one place ye confesse, saying,

_Veritatis tantum umbram consectamur_[450:B], as your master Plato did

before you: blessed be God, I say, that sixten hundred yeare after you

were dead and gone, it may trewly be sayd, that for silver, there is

more comlie plate in one citie of _Englande_, than is in four of the

proudest cities in all _Italie_, and take _Rome_ for one of them: and

for learning, beside the knowledge of all learned tonges and liberal

sciences, even your owne bookes, Cicero, be as well read, and your

excellent eloquence is as well liked and loved, and as trewly folowed

in _Englande_ at this day, as it is now, or ever was since your own

tyme, in any place of Italie, either at Arpinum, where you was borne,

or els at Rome, where you was brought up. And a little to brag with

you, Cicero, where you yourselfe, by your leave, halted in some point

of learning in your own tongue, many in Englande at this day go

streight up, both in trewe skill, and right doing therein."[450:C]

Nor can this progress in the learned languages be considered as

surprising, when we recollect the vast encouragement given to these

studies, not only by the nobility but by the Queen herself; who was,

in fact, a most laborious and erudite author, who wrote a Commentary on

Plato, translated from the Greek two of the Orations of Isocrates, a

play of Euripides, the Hiero of Xenophon, and Plutarch de Curiositate;

from the Latin, Sallust de Bello Jugurthino, Horace de Arte Poetica,

Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiæ, a long chorus from the Hercules

Œtæus of Seneca, one of Cicero's epistles, and another of Seneca's;

who wrote many Latin letters, many English original works, both in

prose and poetry, and who spoke five languages with facility.[451:A]

The British Solomon, it is well known, was equally zealous and

industrious in the cause of learning, and both not only patronized

individuals, but founded and endowed public seminaries; Elizabeth was

the founder of Westminster-School, and of Jesus-College, Oxford, and

to James the University of Edinburgh owes its existence. This laudable

spirit was not confined to regal munificence; in 1584, Emanuel-College,

Cambridge, rose on the site of the Dominican convent of Black Friars,

through the exertions of Sir Walter Mildmay; and in 1594, Sidney-Sussex

College, in the same University, sprung from the patronage of the

Dowager of Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex.

Of the _modern_ languages cultivated at this period, the _Italian_ took

the lead, and became so fashionable at the court of Elizabeth, and

among all who had pretensions to refinement, that it almost rivalled

the _classical mania_ of the day. The Queen spoke it with great purity,

and among those who professed to teach it, Florio, whom we have

formerly mentioned as the object of Shakspeare's satire, was the most

eminent. He was pensioned by Lord Southampton, and on the accession of

James, was appointed reader of the Italian language to Queen Anne, with

a stipend of 100_l._ a-year.[451:B] So popular were the writers of this

fascinating country, that the English language was absolutely inundated

with versions of the Italian poets and novellists, a consequence of

which Roger Ascham bitterly complains; for, lamenting the diffusion of

Italian licentiousness, he exclaims,—"These be the inchantmentes of

Circe, brought out of _Italie_, to marre men's maners in _Englande_;

much by example of ill life, but more by precepts of fond books, of

late translated out of _Italian_ into _Englishe_ sold in every shop

in London:—there be moe of these ungratious bookes set out in printe

within these few monethes, than have been sene in _Englande_ many score

yeares before.—Then they have in more reverence the triumphes of

_Petrarche_, than the Genesis of _Moses_; they make more account of a

tale in _Boccace_, than a storie of the Bible."[452:A]

It must be allowed, we think, that the censure of Ascham partakes too

much of puritanic sourness; for these "ungratious bookes" we find to

have been the great classics of Italy, Petrarca, Boccacio, &c. writers

who, though occasionally romantic in their incidents, and gross in

their imagery, yet presented many just views of life and manners,

and many rich examples of harmonious style and fervid imagination.

They contributed also very powerfully by the variety and fertility of

their fictions, to stimulate the poets of our country, and especially

the dramatic, who have been indebted to this source more than to any

other for the ground-work of their plots. It is, indeed, sufficiently

honourable to Italian literature, that we shall find our unrivalled

Shakspeare occasionally indebted to it for the hints which awakened his

muse.

We are not to conclude, however, that the labours of our translators

were confined to the poetry and romance of Italy, and that its moral,

historical, and didactic compositions were utterly neglected. This was

so far from being the case, that most of the esteemed productions in

these departments were as speedily naturalized as those of the lighter

class; and among them we may mention two works which must have had no

inconsiderable influence in polishing and refining the manners of our

countrymen. In 1576, Robert Peterson, of Lincolne's-Inn, translated

the _Galateo_ of John de la Casa, a system of politeness to which

Chesterfield has been much indebted[453:A]; and in 1588, Thomas Hobby

published a version of the _Cortigiano_ of Baldassar Castiglione, a

work in equal estimation as a manuel of elegance, and termed by the

Italians "the Golden Book."[453:B]

The philological attainments of this age, with respect to Greek, Latin,

and English, will be placed in a still more compendiously clear light,

by a mere enumeration of those who greatly excelled in rendering

their acquisition more systematic and correct. Both Greek and English

literature were early indebted to the labours of Sir _Thomas Smith_,

who was appointed public lecturer at Cambridge on the first of these

languages, the study of which he much facilitated by a new method of

accentuation and pronunciation; publishing at the same time an improved

system of orthography for his native tongue. These useful works were

printed together in 4to. in 1568, under the titles of _De recta et

emendata linguæ Græcæ pronunciatione_, and _De recta et emendata linguæ

Anglicæ scriptione_.

Another equally eminent Grecian philologer appeared at the same

time, in the person of Sir _Henry Savile_, who was Greek preceptor

to Elizabeth, warden of Merton-College, and provost of Eton. He was

editor of the works of Chrysostom, with notes, in 8 vols. folio, 1613,

the most elaborate Greek production which had hitherto issued from

an English press: of Xenophon's Cyropædia, and of the _Steliteutici_

of Nazianzen. He translated also into English, as early as 1581, the

first four books of the History of Tacitus, and his Life of Agricola,

accompanied by very valuable annotations, which were afterwards

published in a Latin version, by Gruter, at Amsterdam.

To his able assistant, also, in editing the works of Chrysostom, the

_Rev. John Boys_, much gratitude is due for his enthusiasm in the

cause of Grecian lore. So attached was he to this study, that during

his fellowship of St. John's College, Cambridge, he voluntarily gave a

Greek lecture every morning in his own room at four o'clock; and, what

affords a still more striking picture of the learned enthusiasm of the

times, it is recorded that this very early prelection was regularly

attended by nearly all the fellows of his college!

Latin Literature appears to have been cultivated with greater purity

and success in the prior than in the latter portion of Elizabeth's

reign. It is scarcely necessary to mention the great names of _George

Buchanan_ and _Walter Haddon_, who divided the attention of the

classical world, and drew from Elizabeth the following terse expression

on their comparative merits:—_Buchananum omnibus antepono; Haddonum

nemini postpono._[454:A]

Nor can we fail to recollect the truly admirable production of

_Ascham_, the "Schole Master; or plaine and perfite Way of teaching

Children, to understand, write, and speake, the _Latin_ Tonge:" than

which a more interesting and judicious treatise has not appeared upon

the subject in any language.

Among the most eminent Latin philologers who witnessed the close of the

sixteenth century, may be mentioned the name of _Edward Grant_, Master

of Westminster-School, who was celebrated for his Latin poetry, and

who published, in 1577, _Oratio de vita et obitu Rogeri Aschami, ac

dictionis elegantia, cum adhortatione ad adolescentulos_. He died in

1601.

With Grant should be classed the master of the free-school of Taunton

in Somersetshire, _John Bond_, who subsequently practised as a

physician, and died in 1612. He published, in 1606, some valuable

commentaries, in the Latin language, on the poems of Horace, and, in

1614, on the Six Satires of Persius.

Roman literature, however, in this country was under yet higher

obligations to _John Rider_, than to either of the preceding

philologers; this learned prelate being the compiler of the first

dictionary in our language, in which the English is placed before the

Latin. It is entitled _A Dictionary Engl. and Latin, and Latin and

English_. Oxon. 1589. 4to. Rider was promoted to the See of Killaloe in

1612, and died in 1632.

In our observations on the state of the _English_ language we have

noticed the labours of _Ascham_ and _Wilson_ as pre-eminently conducive

to its improvement; the first of these writers having published two

excellent models for English composition, and the second having

presented us with a valuable treatise on rhetoric. To these should

be added the efforts of _Richard Mulcaster_, first master of the

Merchant-Taylors School, who, in 1581, published his "Positions,

wherein those primitive circumstances be examined which are necessarie

for the training up of Children, either for skill in theire Booke or

Health in their Bodie;" a work which was followed, in the subsequent

year, by "The first Part of the _Elementarie_, which entreateth chefely

of the right Writing of the English Tung."

The _Positions_ and the _Elementarie_ of Mulcaster, though inferior in

literary merit to the Scholemaster of Ascham, contributed materially to

the progress of English philology, as they contain many valuable and

acute observations on our language.

It appears, from the assertion of _William Bullokar_, an able

co-operator in the work of education, that he was the author of

the _first_ English Grammar. In 1586 he printed his "Bref grammar

for English," which is likewise entitled in fol. 1. "W. Bullokar's

abbreviation of his Grammar for English extracted out of his Grammar at

larg for the spedi parcing of English spech, and the eazier coming to

the knowledge of grammar for other langages;" and Warton adds, in his

account of Bullokar's writings, that among Tanner's books was found "a

copy of his _bref grammar_ above mentioned, interpolated and corrected

with the author's own hand, as it appears, for a new impression. In

one of these manuscript insertions, he calls this, 'the first grammar

for Englishe that ever waz, except my _grammar at large_.'"[456:A]

It is not exactly ascertained in what year the Grammar of _Ben Jonson_

was written, as it did not appear until after his death; but it may be

safely affirmed that to this production of the once celebrated rival

and contemporary of Shakspeare, the English language has been more

indebted than to the labours certainly of any previous, and we may

almost add, of any subsequent, grammarian, Lowth's and Murray's even

not excepted.

The next branch of our present subject embraces the department of

CRITICISM, which was cultivated in this period to a great extent, and

we are sorry to add not seldom with uncommon bitterness and malignity.

Numerous are the writers who complain of the very severe and sarcastic

tone in which the critics of the age indulged; but one instance or

two will be sufficient to prove both the frequency and asperity of

the art. Robert Armin, in his Address _Ad Lectorem hic et ubique_,

prefixed to _The Italian Taylor and his Boy_, says, speaking of his

pen, "I wander with it now in a strange time of taxation, wherein every

pen and inck-horne Boy will throw up his cap at the hornes of the

Moone in censure, although his wit hang there, not returning unlesse

monthly in the wane: such is our ticklish age, and the itching braine

of abon̄dance[456:B];" and in the _Troia Britannica_ of Thomas Heywood,

the author, saluting his various readers under the titles of the

Courteous, the Criticke, and the Scornefull, tells the latter, "I am

not so unexperienced in the envy of this Age, but that I knowe I shall

encounter most sharpe, and severe Censurers, such as continually carpe

at other mens labours, and superficially perusing them, with a kind of

negligence and skorne, quote them by the way, Thus: This is an error,

that was too much streacht, this too slightly neglected, heere many

things might have been added, there it might have been better followed:

this superfluous, that ridiculous. These indeed knowing no other

meanes to have themselves opinioned in the ranke of understanders, but

by calumniating other mens industries."[457:A]

If such proved the strain of general, we need not be surprised if

controversial, criticism assumed a still more tremendous aspect.

Between the Puritans, in the reign of Elizabeth, who carried on their

warfare under the fictitious appellative of _Martin Mar-prelate_, and

the members of the episcopal church, a torrent of libels broke forth,

which inundated the country with a deluge of distorted ridicule and

rancorous abuse. Nor were the quarrels of literary men conducted with

less ferocity, though perhaps with more wit. The republic of letters

was, indeed, infested for near twenty years, from the year 1580 to

1600, with a set of Town-wits, who, void of all moral principle or

decent restraint, employed their pens in lashing to death, with

indiscriminate rage, the objects of their envy or their spleen. Of

this description were those noted characters, Christopher Marlow,

Robert Greene, Thomas Decker, and Thomas Nash; men possessed of

genius, learning, and unquestioned ability, as poets, satirists, and

critics; but excessively debauched in their manners, intemperate in

their passions, and heedless of what they inflicted. The treatment

which Gabriel Harvey, the bosom-friend of Spenser and Sidney, received

from the scurrilous criticism of Greene and Nash, was, though not

altogether unprovoked, beyond all measure gross, cruel, and vindictive.

The literature and the moral character of Harvey were highly

respectable; but he was vain, credulous, affected, and pedantic; he

published a collection of panegyrics on himself; he turned astrologer

and almanack-maker, he was perfectly _Italianated_ in his dress and

manner, in his style he was pompously elaborate, and he boasted himself

the inventor and introducer of English Hexameters.[458:A] These

foibles, together with the obscurity of his parentage, his father

being a rope-maker at Saffron-Walden, in Essex, a circumstance of

which he had the folly to be ashamed, furnished to his adversaries

an inexhaustible fund of ridicule and wit; and had these legitimate

ingredients been unmingled with personal invective and brutal sarcasm,

Gabriel, who was no mean railer himself, had not been sinned against;

but the malignity of Greene and Nash was unbounded; and Harvey, who

was morbidly irritable and bled at every pore, catching a portion of

their spirit, the controversy became so outrageously virulent, that the

prelates of Canterbury and London, Whitgift and Bancroft, interfering,

issued an order, "that all Nashe's books and Dr. Harveys bookes be

taken wheresoever they may be found, and that none of the said bookes

be ever printed hereafter;" an injunction which has rendered most of

the pamphlets on this literary quarrel extremely scarce, particularly

Harvey's "Four Letters And Certaine Sonnets. Especially touching Robert

Greene and other Poets by him abused. Imprinted by John Wolfe 1592;"

a very curious work, which we shall have occasion to quote hereafter;

and Nash's "Have with you to Saffron-Walden, or Gabriel Harvey's hunt

is up," 1596, which includes a humorous but unmerciful representation

of Gabriel's life and character, the bitter satirist exulting in the

idea that he had brought on his adversary, by the poignancy of his

invectives, the effects of premature old age. "I have brought him

low," he exclaims, "and shrewly broken him; look on his head, and you

shall find a gray haire for everie line I have writ against him; and

you shall have all his beard white too by the time he hath read over

this booke."[459:A]

How great a nuisance this bevy of lampooning critics was considered,

and to what a height their shameless effrontery was carried, may be

learnt from a passage in a pamphlet by Dr. Lodge, a contemporary

physician of great learning and good sense, who, though he terms

Nash, and perhaps very justly, "the true English Aretine," has drawn

a picture which applies to him as accurately as to any individual of

the class; "a fellow," to adopt the words of an old play with respect

to this very man, "that carried the deadly stocke in his pen, whose

muze was armed with a jag tooth, and his pen possest with Hercules

furyes."[459:B] "You shall know him" (the envious critic), says Lodge,

"by this; he is a foule lubber, his tongue tipt with lying, his heart

steeled against charity; he walks, for the most part, in black, under

colour of gravity, and _looks as pale as y{e} wizard of the ghost

which cried so miserably at y{e} theater, like an oister wife, Hamlet

revenge_: he is full of infamy and slander, insomuch as if he ease not

his stomach in detracting somewhat or some man before noontide, he fals

into a fever that holds him while supper time; he is alwaies devising

of epigrams or scoffes and grumbles, necromances continually, although

nothing crosse him, he never laughs but at other men's harms, briefly

in being a tyrant over men's fames; he is a very Titius (as Virgil

saith) to his owne thoughtes.

"Titiique vultus inter

Qui semper lacerat comestque mentem.

"The mischiefe is, that by grave demeanour and newes bearing, he

hath got some credite with the greater sort, and manie fowles there

bee, that because he can pen prettilee, hold it gospell whatever he

writes or speakes, his custome is to preferre a foole to credite,

to despight a wise man, and no poet lives by him that hath not a

flout of him. Let him spie a man of wit in a taverne, he is a hare

brained quareller. Let a scholler write, Tush (saith he) I like not

these common fellowes; let him write well, he hath stolen it out of

some note booke; let him translate, tut it is not of his owne; let

him be named for preferment, he is insufficient because poore; no

man shall rise in his world, except to feed his envy; no man can

continue in his friendship who hateth all men." He then adds the

following judicious advice, predicting what would be the consequence of

neglecting to pursue it:—"Divine wits for many things as sufficient

as all antiquity (I speake it not on slight surmise, but considerate

judgment) to you belongs the death that doth nourish this poison; to

you the paine that endure the reproofe. LILLY, the famous for facility

in discourse; SPENCER, best read in ancient poetry; DANIEL, choice

in word and invention; DRAITON, diligent and formall; TH. NASH, true

English Aretine. All you unnamed professors, or friends of poetry (but

by me inwardly honoured) knit your industries in private to unite your

fames in publicke; let the strong stay up the weake, and the weake

march under conduct of the strong; and all so imbattle yourselfes, that

hate of vertue may not imbase you. But if besotted with foolish vain

glory, emulation and contempt, you fall to neglect one another, _Quod

Deus omen avertat_, doubtless it will be as infamous a thing shortly to

present any book whatsoever learned to any Mæcenas in England, as it is

to be headsman in any free city in Germanie."[460:A]

Turning, however, from this abuse of critical and satiric talent, let

us direct our attention exclusively to those productions of the art

which are distinguished as well by moderation and urbanity, as by

learning and acumen.

It is worthy of remark that in _English_ literature, during this

era, nearly all the professed critical treatises, if we except those

of Wilson and Ascham, were employed on the subject of poetry. We

shall confine ourselves, therefore, to a chronological enumeration,

accompanied by a few observations, of these interesting pieces. The

first, in the order of time, is a production of _George Gascoigne_ the

poet, and was published at the close of the second edition of "The

Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire, Corrected, perfected, and augmented

by the Authour, 1575. _Tam Marti, quam Mercurio._ Imprinted at London

by H. Bynneman for Richard Smith." It is entitled, "Certayne notes of

Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English, written

at the request of Master Edovardo Donati;" and was again printed in

"The whole workes of George Gascoign Esquyre: newlye compyled into one

volume," small 4to. b. l. 1587. This little tract is more didactic than

critical; but contains several judicious directions, and some sensible

remarks.

Ten years after, appeared a treatise on "Scottis Poesie," from the

pen of King James the First, when only eighteen years of age. This

learned monarch commenced his career of authorship with "The Essayes

of a Premise, in the Divine art of Poesie. Imprinted at Edinburgh,

by Thomas Vautroullier, 1585, 4to. Cum privilegio Regali." The fifth

article in this miscellany includes the criticism in question, under

the title of "Ane schort Treatise, containing some reulis and cautelis

to be observit and eschewit in Scottis poesie." This is a production

highly curious, as well for its manner as matter; for, not content with

mere precept, the royal critic has given us copious specimens of the

several kinds of verse then in use. The eighth chapter of this short

treatise is devoted to this purpose, detailing rules and examples, 1st,

For _lang histories_. 2dly, For _heroic acts_. 3dly, For _heich and

grave subjects_. 4thly, For _tragic matters_. 5thly, For _flyting or

invectives_. 6thly, For _Sonnet verse_. 7thly, For _Matters of love_;

and 8thly, For _Tenfoot verse_.

Under the fifth head is given as an _exemplar_ of the _Rouncefalles_,

or _Tumbling_ verse, the lines formerly quoted from the _Flyting_

of _Montgomery_ as illustrative of a superstition peculiar to

Allhallow-Eve; and under the seventh, on "love materis," is introduced

as an example of "cuttit and broken verse, quhairof new formes are

daylie inventit according to the Poetis pleasour," the following

stanza, which has been rendered familiar to an English ear by the

genius of Burns:—

"Quha wald have tyrde to heir that tone,

Quhilk birds corroborat ay abone,

Through schouting of the larkis!

They sprang sa heich into the skyes,

Quhill Cupide walknis with the cryis

Of Nature's chapell clerkis.

Then leaving all the heavins above,

He lichted on the card;

Lo! how that lytill god of love

Before me then appeard.

So mylde-like

And child-like,

With bow thre quarters skant,

So moilie

And coylie

He lukit lyke a Sant."

It is observable that James, in assigning his "twa caussis" for

composing this work, tells us that "albeit _sindrie hes written of it_

(poesie) _in English_, quhilk is lykest to our language, zit we differ

from thame in sindrie reulis of poesie, as ze will find be experience;"

but who these _sundry writers_ were, has not, with the exception of

Gascoigne's "Notes of Instruction," been hitherto discovered.[462:A]

It is barely possible that the royal critic may have included in his

"sindrie," the next work which we have to record on the subject, the

production of our immortal Spenser, and entitled "The English Poet," a

work which we lament should have been suffered to perish in manuscript.

Its existence was first intimated to the public in 1579, by E. K., in

his argument to the tenth Aeglogue of the _Shepheard's Calender_, with

a promise, which unfortunately proved faithless, of committing it to

the press. Poetry, observes this commentator, is "no art, but a divine

gift and heavenly instinct not to be gotten by labour and learning, but

adorned with both; and poured into the witte by a certaine Enthusiasmos

and celestial inspiration, as the Author hereof elsewhere at large

discourseth in his booke called _The English Poet_, which booke being

lately come to my handes, I minde also by God's grace, upon further

advisement, to publish."[463:A] That the taste and erudition of Spenser

had rendered this critical essay highly interesting, there is every

reason to conclude, and though the only positive testimony to its

composition rests on the single authority which we have quoted, it is

extremely probable, from the manner in which its acquisition by the

commentator is mentioned, that the MS. had circulated, and continued to

circulate, among the friends and admirers of the poet, for some years.

Scarcely had the British Solomon published his juvenile criticisms,

when a kindred work issued from the London press, under the title of

"A Discourse of English Poetrie, together with the Author's Judgment

touching the reformation of our English verse. By William Webbe,

Graduate. Imprinted at London by John Charlewood. 4to, 1586." Black

letter.

The chief purport of this pamphlet, now so rare that only three copies

are known to exist[463:B], is to propose, what the author terms, a

"perfect platform, or prosodia of versifying, in imitation of the

Greeks and Latins," a scheme which, though supported by Sidney, Dyer,

Spenser, and Harvey, happily miscarried. "The hexameter verse," says

Nash, with great good sense, in his controversy with Harvey, "I graunt

to be a gentleman of an auncient house, (so is many an English

beggar,) yet this clyme of ours hee cannot thrive in; our speech is too

craggy for him to set his plough in; hee goes twitching and hopping

in our language, like a man running upon quagmires, up the hill in

one syllable and downe the dale in another, retaining no part of that

stately smooth gate which he vaunts himself with amongst the Greeks and

Latins."[464:A]

Webbe's "Discourse," however, is valuable on account of the characters

which he has drawn of the English poets, from Chaucer to his own time.

He notices, also, "Gaskoynes Instructions for versifying;" and, after

declaring the Shepherd's Calender inferior neither to Theocritus nor

Virgil, he expresses an ardent wish that the other works of Spenser

might get abroad, and especially his "English Poet, which his friend

E. K. did once promise to publish." The tract concludes with the

author's assertion, that his "onely ende" in compiling it was "not as

an exquisite censure concerning the matter," but "that it might be

an occasion to have the same thoroughly, and with greater discretion

taken in hande, and laboured by some other of greater abilitie, of whom

I know there be manie among the famous poets in London, who both for

learning and leysure may handle the argument far more pythelie."[464:B]

In 1588, _Abraham Fraunce_, another encourager and writer of English

Hexameter and Pentameter verses, published in octavo, a critical

treatise, a mixture of prose and verse, under the quaint title of

"The Arcadian Rhetoricke, or the Precepts of Rhetoricke made plain by

example, Greeke, Latyne, Englishe, Italyan, and Spanishe." This rare

volume is in the library of Mr. Malone, and is valuable, observes

Warton, for its English examples.[464:C]

In the same year which produced Fraunce's work, appeared the

_Touch-Stone of Wittes_, written by _Edward Hake_, and printed at

London by Edmund Botifaunt. This little tract is employed in sketching

the features of the chief poets of the day; but differs not materially

from _Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie_, from which, indeed, it

is principally compiled. Hake describes himself (in another of his

productions called "_A Touchstone_ for this time present,") as an

"attorney of the Common Pleas;" mentions his having been educated under

John Hopkins, whom he terms a learned and exquisite teacher, and when

criticising the _Mirrour of Magistrates_ in his _Touchstone of Wittes_,

speaks of its augmentor, John Higgins, as his particular friend.[465:A]

But by far the most valuable work which was published in the province

of criticism, during the life-time of Shakspeare, was written by

_George Puttenham_, and entitled "The Arte of English Poesie, Contrived

into three Bookes: The first of Poets and Poesie, the second of

Proportion, the third of Ornament. At London Printed by Richard Field,

dwelling in the black-Friers neere Ludgate. 1589."

This book, which seems to have been composed considerably anterior to

its publication, was printed anonymously, and has been ascribed to

Spenser and Sidney.[465:B] Bolton, whose _Hypocritica_ was written

in the reign of James I., though not printed until 1722, mentions

Puttenham, however, as the reputed author; and a reference to Bolton's

manuscript, preserved in the archives at Oxford, enabled Anthony Wood

to announce this fact to the public. "There is," says he, "a book in

being called _The Art of English Poesie_, not written by Sydney, as

some have thought, but rather by one _Puttenham_, sometime a Gentleman

Pensioner to Qu. Elizab."[465:C]

An elegant reprint of this old critic has been lately (1811) edited by

Mr. Haslewood, in which, with indefatigable industry and research, he

has collected all that could throw light on the personal and literary

history of his author. His opinion of the critical acumen of Puttenham,

though favourable, is not too highly coloured. "Puttenham," he remarks,

"was a candid but sententious critic. What his observations want in

argument, is made up for by the soundness of his judgment; and his

conclusions, notwithstanding their brevity, are just and pertinent. He

did not hastily scan his author, to indulge in an untimely sneer, and

his opinions were adopted by contemporary writers, and have not been

dissented from by the moderns."[466:A]

Of the same tenour are the sentiments of Mr. Gilchrist, who opens

his analysis of the _Arte of English Poesie_, with asserting that it

"is on many accounts one of the most curious and entertaining, and,

intrinsically, one of the most valuable books of the age of Elizabeth;"

infinitely superior, he adds, as an elementary treatise on the arts,

to the volumes of Wilson and Webbe, "as being formed on a more

comprehensive scale, and illustrated by examples; while the copious

intermixture of contemporary anecdote, tradition, manners, opinions,

and the numerous specimens of coeval poetry, no where else preserved,

contribute to form a volume of infinite amusement, curiosity, and

value."[466:B]

To various parts of this interesting treatise, we shall have occasion

frequently to refer, when discussing the subjects of miscellaneous

poetry and metropolitan manners. It is indeed a store-house of poetical

erudition.

The next work which, in the order of publication, falls under our

notice, is SIR JOHN HARRINGTON'S _Apologie of Poetry_, prefixed in 1591

to his Version of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. It is a production

of some merit, displaying both judgment and ingenuity; but is most

remarkable for the earliest notice of Puttenham's Arte of Poesie,

and for affording a striking proof of the obscurity in which that

critic had enveloped himself with regard to its parentage; for though

two years had elapsed since its publication, it appears that neither

the Queen, her courtiers, nor the literary world, had the slightest

idea of its origin, and Sir John speaks of the author under the

appellation of "_Ignoto_." "Neither," says he, "do I suppose it to be

greatly behoovefull for this purpose, to trouble you with the curious

definitions of a poet and poesie, and with the subtill distinctions of

their sundrie kinds; nor to dispute how high and supernatural the name

of a Maker is, so christened in English by that _unknowne Godfather_,

that this last yeare save one, viz. 1589, set forth a booke called

the Art of English Poetrie: and least of all do I purpose to bestow

any long time to argue, whether Plato, Zenophon, and Erasmus, writing

fictions and dialogues in prose, may justly be called poets, or whether

Lucan writing a story in verse be an historiographer, or whether

Master Faire translating Virgil, Master Golding translating Ovid's

Metamorphosis, and my selfe in this worke that you see, be any more

than versifiers, as the same _Ignoto_ termeth all translators."[467:A]

Poetry, soon after the birth of this Apology, had to boast of a

champion of still greater prowess, in the person of SIR PHILIP

SIDNEY, whose _Defence of Poesie_ was first made public in 1595.

It had, however, been previously circulated in manuscript for some

years; thus Sir John Harrington refers to it in his Apology 1591,

and there is reason to believe, that it was written so early as 1581

or 1582. This delightful piece of criticism exhibits the taste and

erudition of Sir Philip in a striking light; the style is remarkable

for amenity and simplicity; the laws of the Drama and Epopœa are laid

down with singular judgment and precision, and the cause of poetry

is strenuously and successfully supported against the calumny and

abuse of the puritanical scowlers, one of whom had the effrontery to

dedicate to him his collection of scurrility, in the very title-page

of which he classes poets with pipers and jesters, and terms them the

"caterpillars of the commonwealth."[468:A]

A very ingenious "_Comparative Discourse of our English Poets, with

the Greeke, Latine, and Italian Poets_," was published by FRANCIS

MERES, in 1598, under the title of _Palladis Tamia, Wit's

Treasury_.[468:B] Meres is certainly much indebted to the thirty-first

chapter of the first book of Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie; but

he has considerably extended the catalogue of poets, and it should be

added, that his comparisons are drawn with no small portion of skill

and felicity, and that his criticisms are, for the most part, just and

tersely expressed.