swarm in his poems even to deformity."* Surely, when we read those exquisite lines, "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past,"- we think of anything else than the judge and the crier of the court; and yet this is one of the examples produced in proof of this theory. Dryden's noble use of "the last assizes" is no evidence that he was a lawyer. Many similar instances are given, equally founded, we think, upon the mistake of believing that the technical language has no relation to the general language. Metaphorical, no doubt, are some of these expressions, such as "But be contented when that fell arrest Without all buil shall carry me away;' but the metaphors are as familiar to the reader as to the poet himself. They present a clear and forcible image to the mind; and, looking at the habits of society, they can scarcely be called technical. Dekker describes the conversation at the third-rate London ordinary: There is another ordinary, at which your London usurer, your stale bachelor, and your thrifty attorney do resort; the price three-pence; the rooms as full of company as a jail; and indeed divided into several wards, like the beds of an hospital. The compliment between these is not much, their words few; for the belly hath no ears: every man's eye here is upon the other man s trencher, to note whether his fellow lurch him, or no: if they chance to discourse, it is of nothing but of statutes, bonds, recognizances, fines, recoveries, audits, rents, subsidies, sureties, enclosures, liveries, indictments, outlawries, feoffments, judgments, commissions, bankrupts, amercements, and of such horrible matter."‡ Here is pretty good evidence of the general acquaintance with the law's jargon; and Dekker, who is himself a dramatic poet, has put together in a few lines as many technical terms as we may find in Shakspere. It has been maintained, as we have mentioned, that our poet was brought up as a gardener, as proved by his familiarity with the terms and practice of the horticultural art. Malone, after citing his legal examples, says,—" Whenever as large a number of instances of his ecclesiastical or medicinal knowledge shall be produced, what has now been stated will certainly not be entitled to any weight." We shall not argue that none but an apothecary could have written the description of the vendor of drugs, and the culler of simples, in whose "needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd, and other skins Of ill-shap'd fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds." § Nor do we hold, because he has mentioned the ague about a dozen times, he was familiar with the remedies for that disorder; nor that, when Falstaff describes the causes of apoplexy to the Chief Justice, and says that he has read • Brown's Autobiographical Poems, &c. Ode on Mrs. Killigrew. of the effects in Galen. Shakspere had gone through a course of study in that author to qualify himself for a diploma. He does not use medical terms as frequently as legal, because they are not as apposite to the thoughts and situations of his speakers. It is the same with the terms of divinity, which Malone cannot find in such abundance as the terms of law. But if the terms be not there, assuredly the spirit lives in his pure teaching; and his philosophy is lighted up with something much higher than the moral irradiations of the unassisted understanding. Of his manifold knowledge it may be truly said, as be said of his own Henry V., "Hear him but reason in divinity, Aud, all-admiring, with an inward wish You would desire the king were made a prelate : Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, We should have thought it unnecessary to have added anything to the views which we thus entertained in 1843 (when the original edition of this Biography was published), had the subject not been invested with a new importance, in its treatment by the late Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench. In 1859 Lord Campbell published a volume, entitled 'Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements considered.' The subject is approached by the learned Judge in a just and liberal spirit, essentially different from that of the Shaksperian critics of the last age. He holds "that there has been a great deal of misrepresentation and delusion as to Shakespeare's opportunities when a youth of acquiring knowledge, and as to the knowledge he had acquired. From a love of the incredible, and a wish to make what he afterwards accomplished actually miraculous, a band of critics have con. spired to lower the condition of his father, and to represent the son, when approaching man's estate, as still almost wholly illiterate." We are gratified, that in recapitulating the various facts which militate against the vague traditions, and ignorant assumptions, some of which prevailed only a quarter of a century ago, Lord Campbell refers to that most elaborate and entertaining book, Knight's Life of Shakspere,' 1st edit. p. 16." But, of the general argument comprised in our preceding five pages, Lord Campbell does not take the slightest notice. He no doubt weighed well all the points in which, with my own imperfect legal knowledge, I ventured to • Henry V., Act I. Scene L doubt whether Shakspere was bred an attorney. He does not overlook the words of Nashe about "the trade of Noverint," and "whole Hamlets," but he thus judicially decides:-"Now, if the innuendo which would have been introduced into the declaration in an action, Shakespeare v. Nash,' for this libel (thereby then and there meaning the said William Shakespeare'-) be made out, there can be no doubt as to the remaining innuendo 'thereby then and there meaning that the said William Shakespeare had been an attorney's clerk, or bred an attorney." With the most laudable industry Lord Campbell has made a selection from the Plays and Poems, occupying more than two-thirds of his book, to exhibit "expressions and allusions, that must be supposed to come from one that has been a professional lawyer." He also holds that Shakspere's will was in ali probability composed by himself, and that "a testator without professional experience, could hardly have used language so appropriate as we find in this will to express his meaning." We should have thought that Lord Campbell, following up his own argument, that in this will, when Shakspere leaves his second best bed to his wife, he showed his technical skill by omitting the word devise, which he had used in disposing of his realty, might have stated that in this bequest Shakspere was aware that his wife was entitled to dower; and yet he does not hesitate to repeat the misrepresentation and delusion" which had been attached to this fact before we had the good fortune to discover that Shakspere on his death-bed did not exhibit a contemptuous neglect of his wife. Our argument is, we venture to hope, not affected by Lord Campbell's judicial sneers and exaggerated inferences :-"The idolatrous worshippers of Shakespeare, who think it necessary to make his moral qualities as exalted as his poetical genius, account for this sorry bequest, and for no other notice being taken of poor Mrs. Shakespeare in the will, by saying that he knew she was sufficiently provided for by her right of dower out of his landed property, which the law would give her; and they add that he must have been tenderly attached to her, because (they take upon themselves to say) she was exquisitely beautiful as well as strictly virtuous. But she was left by her husband without house or furniture (except the second best bed), or a kind word, or any other token of his love; and I sadly fear that between William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway the course of true love never did run smooth." Lord Campbell's plural "idolatrous worshippers" is a gentle form of referring to the one worshipper who originated this new view with regard to dower. That worshipper, in his idolatry, never held up Ann Hathaway as "exquisitely beautiful;" "strictly virtuous" he believed her to have been according to the custom of betrothment which existed in Shakspere's youth. With Lord Campbell's well-known habit of literary appropriation—" convey the wise it call "-did he forbear to adopt this interpretation because it was not discovered by a lawyer? The Chief Justice knew perfectly well that the right to dower totally upset all the inferences about the second best bed, which the Commentators-lawyers as some of them were--set forth, and which were currently accepted up to the time when I presumed to say that lawyers had shut their eyes to the fact. We hold, then, that William Shakspere, the son of a possessor and cultivator of land, a gentleman by descent, married to the heiress of a good family, comfortable in his worldly circumstances, married the daughter of one in a similar rank of life, and in all probability did not quit his native place when he so married. The marriage-bond, which was discovered a few years since, has set at rest all doubt as to the name and residence of his wife. She is there described as Anne Hathwey, of Stratford, in the diocese of Worcester, maiden. Rowe, in his Life,' says, "Upon his leaving school he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed to him and in order to settle in the world, after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford." At the hamlet of Shottery, which is in the parish of Stratford, the Hathaways had been settled forty years before the period of Shakspere's marriage; for in the Warwickshire Surveys, in the time of Philip and Mary, it is recited that John Hathaway held property at Shottery, by copy of court-roll, dated 20th of April, 34th of Henry VIII. (1543).* The Hathaway of Shakspere's time was named Richard; and the intimacy between him and John Shakspere is shown by a precept in an action against Richard Hathaway, dated 1576, in which John Shakspere is his bondman. Before the discovery of the marriage-bond Maione had found a confirmation of the traditional account that the maiden name of Saakspere's wife was Hathaway; for Lady Barnard, the grand-daughter of Shakspere, makes bequests in her will to the children of Thomas Hathaway, "her kinsman." But Malone doubts whether there were not other Hathaways than those of Shottery, residents in the town of Stratford, and not in the hamlet included in the parish. This is possible. But, on the other hand, the description in the marriage-bond of Anne Hathaway, as of Stratford, is no proof that she was not of Shottery; for such a document would necessarily have regard only to the parish of the person described. Tradition, always valuable when it is not. opposed to evidence, has associated for many years the cottage of the Hathaways at Shottery with the wife of Shakspere. Garrick purchased relics out of it at the time of the Stratford Jubilee; Samuel Ireland afterwards carried off what was called Shakspere's courting-chair; and there is still in the house a very ancient carved bedstead, which has been handed down from descendant to descendant as an heirloom. The house was no doubt once adequate to form a comfortable residence for a substantial and even wealthy yeoman. It is still a pretty cottage, embosomed by trees, and surrounded by pleasant pastures; and The Shottery property, which was called Hewland, remained with the descendants of the Hathaways till 1838. 266 here the young poet might have surrendered his prudence to his affections :- "As in the sweetest buds The eating canker dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all." * The very early marriage of the young man, with one more than seven years his elder, has been supposed to have been a rash and passionate proceeding. Upor the face of it, it appears an act that might at least be reproved in the words which follow those we have just quoted : "As the most forward bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, This is the common consequence of precocious marriages; but we are not therefore to conclude that "the young and tender wit" of our Shakspere was "turned to folly"-that his "forward bud" was "eaten by the canker "-that Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I., Scene 1. |