may be sure that he took a lively interest in the losses of his fellows, and was forward to lend them a helping hand.

The Summer following, he had a narrow escape from a similar calamity at home. On the 9th of July, 1614, Stratford was devastated by fire, to such an extent that the people made an appeal to the nation for relief. At the instance of various gentlemen of the neighbourhood, the King issued a brief in May, 1615, authorizing collections to be made in the churches for the rebuilding of the town, and alleging that fifty-four dwelling-houses had been destroyed, besides much other property, amounting in all to upwards of £8,000. The result of the appeal is not known; nor is it known what influence the Poet may have used towards procuring the royal brief.

The Fall of 1614 finds Shakespeare in London using his influence effectually in the cause of his fellow-citizens.' It seems that several persons had set on foot a project for inclosing certain commons near Stratford, which the public were interested to keep open. The Poet had private reasons, also, for bestirring himself in the matter, as the projected inclosure was likely to affect his interest in the lease of the tithes. A legal instrument, dated October 28, 1614, is extant, whereby William Replingham binds himself to indemnify William Shakespeare and Thomas Greene for any loss which they, in the judgment of certain referees, may sustain in respect of the yearly value of the tithes they jointly or severally hold, "by reason of any inclosure or decay of tillage there meant or intended.”

A few days after, Greene is found in London moving in the business as clerk of the Stratford corporation. In some notes of his made at the time, we have the following, dated November 17, 1614: "My cousin Shakespeare coming yesterday to town, I went to see him, how he did. He told me that they assured him they meant to inclose no further than

to Gospel-bush, and so up straight (leaving out part of the dingles to the field) to the gate in Clopton hedge, and take in Salisbury's piece; and that they mean in April to survey the land, and then to give satisfaction, and not before; and he and Mr. Hall say they think there will be nothing done at all."

Greene returned to Stratford soon after, and his notes, which he continued to make, inform us that the corporation had a meeting on the 23d of December, and sent letters to Shakespeare and Mainwaring: "Letters written, one to Mr. Mainwaring, another to Mr. Shakespeare, with almost all the company's hands to either. I also writ myself to my cousin Shakespeare the copies of all our acts, and then also a note of the inconveniences that would happen by the inclosure." The letters to Shakespeare are lost in that to Mainwaring, which is preserved, the corporation urged in strong terms the damage Stratford would suffer by the projected inclosure, and also the heavy loss the people had lately sustained by fire. Mr. Arthur Mainwaring was a person in the domestic service of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, which explains why he was written to in the matter. It is pretty clear from these slight notices, that the corporation left the care of their interests very much to Shakespeare, who had approved himself a good hand at bringing things to pass in actual life, as well as in ideal. The result was, an order from Court not only forbidding the inclosure to proceed, but peremptorily commanding that some steps already taken should be forthwith retraced.

This Thomas Greene was an attorney of Stratford. The origin and degree of his relationship to the Poet are not known. The parish register of Stratford records the burial of "Thomas Greene, alias Shakespeare," on the 6th of March, 1590. Probably enough, the attorney of 1614 may have been his son; and the relationship between the two

families may furnish the true key to that remarkable acquaintance which the Poet shows with the mysteries of the law.

Such details of business may not seem very appropriate in a Life of the greatest of poets; but we have clear evidence that Shakespeare took a lively interest in them, and was a good hand at managing them. He had learned by experience, no doubt, that "money is a good soldier, and will on"; and that, "if money go before, all ways do lie open." And the thing carries this benefit, if no other, that it tells us a man may be something of a poet, without being either above or below the common affairs of life.

When, or to whom, the Poet parted with his theatrical interests, we have no knowledge: that he did part with them, may be probably, though not necessarily, concluded from his not mentioning them in his will; and, from the large productiveness of such investments at that time, he would have no difficulty in finding a purchaser. A pretty careful investigation of the matter has brought good judges to the conclusion, that in 1608 his income could not have been less than £400 a-year. This, for all practical purposes, would be equivalent to some $12,000 in our time. The Rev. John Ward, who became vicar of Stratford in 1662, left a Diary, in which we have the following: I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all. frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year; and for that had an allowance so large, that he spent at the rate of £1,000 a year, as I have heard. -Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard; for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted. Remember to peruse Shakespeare's plays, and be versed in them, that I may not be ignorant in that matter."

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The only point in this, that calls for present notice, is the Poet's alleged expenditure. The honest and cautious vicar did well in adding to his statement "as I have heard." That Shakespeare kept up a liberal, not to say sumptuous, establishment, and was fond of entertaining his neighbours, and still more his old associates, after a generous fashion, we can well believe; but that he had £1,000 a-year to spend, or would have spent if he had, is not credible: it would have been, for all practical purposes, equivalent to about $30,000 in our day!

Francis Meres, in the work already cited, has the following: "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare: witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared Sonnets among his private friends." This ascertains that some, at least, of the Poet's Sonnets were well known in 1598, though none of them had then been printed. Whether all of them were written before that date, we have no means of knowing; but the probability is that they were written at different times, as the author felt in the mood, or wished to gratify his friends; and that portions of them were copied in manuscript from time to time, and passed privately from hand to hand. At length a collection of them, to the number of a hundred and fiftyfour, was made, and given to the public in 1609, by a bookseller who probably did not get them from the Poet himself.

Of the thirty-eight plays ascribed to Shakespeare, twentyseven have already been mentioned. Of the eleven still to be accounted for, King Lear was acted at Whitehall before the Court in December, 1606, and two editions of it were issued in 1608. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and Antony and Cleopatra were entered at the Stationers' in 1608, and Pericles was published the next year. Macbeth was played at the Globe theatre in April, 1610, but perhaps written some

time before. Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale were performed at the Globe in the Spring of 1611; and King Henry the Eighth is not heard of till the burning of that theatre in 1613, when it is described as "a new play." Of Coriolanus and The Two Noble Kinsmen we have no notice whatever till after the Poet's death; while of Othello and The Tempest we have no well-authenticated notices during his life; though there is a record, once held authentic, noting them to have been acted at the Court, the former in November, 1604, the latter in November, 1611: but that record, as in the case of Measure for Measure, has lately been pronounced spurious by the highest authority.

Some question has been made whether Shakespeare were a member of the celebrated convivial club established by Sir Walter Raleigh, and which held its sessions at the Mermaidtavern. We have nothing that directly certifies his membership of that choice institution; but there are several things inferring it so strongly as to leave no reasonable doubt on the subject. His conversations certainly ran in that circle of wits, some of whom are directly known to have belonged to it; and among them all there was not one whose then acknowledged merits gave him a better title to its privileges. It does not indeed necessarily follow from his facility and plenipotence of wit in writing, that he could shine at those extempore "flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar." But, besides the natural inference that way, we have the statement of honest old Aubrey, that "he was very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit." Francis Beaumont, who was a prominent member of that jovial senate, and to whom Shirley applies the fine hyperbolism that "he talked a comedy," was born in 1586, and died in 1615. I cannot doubt that he had our Poet, among others, in his eye, when he wrote those celebrated lines to Ben Jonson :