According to a note at the end of the volume, "this booke was begunne ffeb. 14, 1661, and finished April the 25, 1663, att Mr. Brooks his house in Stratford uppon Avon in Warwickeshire." Several manuscripts by Ward are in the same collection, but this is the only one which contains any notice of Shakespeare of much worth.

Shakspear had but 2 daughters, one whereof Mr. Hall, the physitian, married, and by her had one daughter, to wit, the Lady Bernard of Abbingdon.

I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all;* hee frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days livd at Stratford, and supplied the stage with 2 plays every year, and for that had an allowance so large that hee spent att the rate of 1000.d. a yeer, as I have heard. Shakespear, Drayton, and Ben Jhonson, had a merry meeting, and itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour there contracted.

Remember to peruse Shakespears plays, and bee versed in them, that I may not bee ignorant in that matter.

It may be said in favour of this traditionary account of the poet's last illness, that it is perfectly reasonable and in

* No notion about Shakespeare was so general as this, and taken in a proper sense, none more correct. It of course implies his disregard of the classical models, and the absence of all pedantic display of learning, considered so essential by most of his contemporaries. Ben Jonson meant no more than this when he remarked to Drummond "that Shakspeer wanted arte," for in his lines in the first folio he expressly commends the art with which Shakespeare has contrived his natural "matter." Shakespeare's far-seeing judgment excluded the barriers that in an after age were found to be blemishes instead of beauties, and it is chiefly on this account that his want of learning was so much insisted upon by the writers of the seventeenth century. According to Fuller, "his learning was very little, so that, as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even, as they are taken out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art that was used upon him." Honest John Taylor, the water-poet, was of a different opinion, Spencer and Shakespeare did in art excell," Workes, 1630, iii. 72. Cartwright thus alludes to Shakespeare in some lines on Fletcher, Poems, 1651, p. 273,—

66

we did sit

Sometimes five acts out in pure spightfull wit,
Which flow'd in such true salt, that we did doubt
In which scene we laught most two shillings out.
Shakespeare to thee was dull, whose best jest lies
I' th' ladies questions, and the fools replies,
Old fashion'd wit, which walk'd from town to town
In turn'd hose, which our fathers call'd the clown;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceaness call,
And which made bawdry pass for comicall.
Nature was all his art; thy vein was free
As his, but without his scurility.

telligible, and comes to us on very fair authority. A festive meeting might have accelerated fever, and the bad drainage of Stratford fostered epidemics. The good people of that town were not very careful in such matters;* and the removement of filth without injury to health was not understood in those days. Even in Garrick's time Stratford is mentioned by that great actor as "the most dirty, unseemly, ill pav'd, wretched looking town in all Britain."+ We may be quite sure the streets, however classic now as the paths of Shakespeare, were in the days of the poet equally amenable to a similar criticism. Whatever degree of credit, then, we may be disposed to give to the account of the " merry meeting," the probabilities are greatly in favour of the other part of Ward's history being correct. ‡ Shakespeare was probably attended in his last illness by his son-in-law, Dr. John Hall. Malone, in a letter dated May 1st, 1790, says, “I find, from Dr. Hall's pocket-book, which was once in my possession, that a Mr. Nason was Shakspeare's apothe

*Presenmenttes made this 8th of Januarie, 1605, by the juriers holdenn by Mr. William Wyeatte Bailieffe within the burroughe of Stratford att the Quartter Sessions.

Item, for Paulle the dier for leavinge mucke before his doore.

Wyddoe Roggers att the Bullringe for leavinge mucke in Swyenne streitt. Goodmane Sannes for leavinge mucke in Swyenne streytte.

For Mr. Abraham Sturlie nott makinge cleane his soylle before his barne in Rather markett and mud waull in Henlie streytte.

Richard Burman for makinge a muckhill before his doore.

Edward Cottrill for makinge a muckhill in Rather markett.

Edward Bromlie for nott makinge cleane the churche waye before his barne by the water side.

Nicholis James for makinge a muckhill att the sheip streytts end.

Roger Marshalle for nott makinge cleane his soille before his door in the Sheip streytte.

Hamnett Sadler and George Warrane for nott makinge cleane the soille in Sheip streytte.

Henrye Smythe for nott makinge cleane the water couarsse before his barne in Chapple laine.

Johne Perrie for a muckhill in the Chapple laine.

Henrye Smythe for keipinge his swynne and duckes in the Chapple yarde.

† Autograph letter in the possession of W. O. Hunt, Esq.

Perhaps it could be ascertained whether Drayton and Ben Jonson could have been at Stratford shortly before the death of Shakespeare. Drayton, it is

cary." This name is corrected to Court in a subsequent note, but I suspect he merely drew this conclusion from the circumstance of there being an apothecary of that name at Stratford in 1616, not from an actual statement that he had attended the poet.

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of Stratford church, a few paces from that part of the wall against which the charnel-house was erected. A flat stone covers his remains, with the following inscription,

but the poet's name does not appear. No reasonable doubt, however, can be raised as to the fact of this being his last resting-place. It is parallel with the graves of the other members of the family, and Dugdale, in 1656, expressly states that "his body is buried" underneath this stone. The letter quoted at p. 88, asserts that this epitaph was "made by himselfe a little before his death," a late belief,

well known, was a Warwickshire man, and he and Shakespeare are mentioned together in the following epigram on Dugdale,

Now, Stratford upon Avon, we would choose
Thy gentle and ingenuous Shakespeare muse,
Were he among the living yet, to raise
T'our antiquaries merit some just praise:

And sweet-tongu'd Drayton, that hath given renown
Unto a poor (before) and obscure town,
Harsull, were he not fal'n into his tombe,
Would crown this work with an encomium.
Our Warwickshire the heart of England is,
As you most evidently have prov'd by this;
Having it with more spirit dignifi'd
Then all our English counties are beside.

Cokain's Small Poems, 1658, pp. 111-112.

unnoticed earlier than 1693. It is unnecessary to say that such wretched doggrel never could have proceeded from Shakespeare's pen, yet those have not been wanting who have told us that they did so, and that his horror of the charnel-house, so near this spot, was the occasion of them. The Gothic doorway, within a few steps of Shakespeare's grave, opened into this building, which, says Ireland, "contains the greatest assemblage of human bones I ever saw." It is now pulled down, but Captain Saunders has fortunately preserved a very careful drawing of its interior, the most curious record of this charnel-house that has been preserved,

Or shut me nightly in a charnel house,
O'er cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,
With reaky shanks, and yellow chapless sculls,

Things that to hear them told have made me tremble.

On the north wall of the chancel, elevated about five feet from the floor, is erected a monument to Shakespeare. He is represented with a cushion before him, a pen in his right hand, his left resting upon a scroll. This bust, says Wivell,

"is fixed under an arch, between two Corinthian columns of black marble, with gilded bases and capitals, supporting the entablature; above which, and surmounted by a death's head, are carved his arms; and on each side is a small figure in a sitting posture, one holding in his left hand a spade, and the other, whose eyes are closed, with an inverted torch in his left hand, the right resting upon a skull, as symbols of mortality." The monument was erected before 1623, for it is mentioned by Leonard Digges in some verses prefixed to the first folio; and it was executed by Gerard Johnson,* an eminent sculptor of that period. It was originally coloured, the eyes being represented as light hazel, the hair and beard auburn, the dress a scarlet doublet, over which was a loose black gown without sleeves. In 1748, it was repainted, the old colours being faithfully imitated; but in 1793, Malone caused it to be painted white, not delicately and artistically, but by a common house-painter, It is to be feared that this injudicious act has irretrievably lost to us some of the more characteristic features of the bust, and the regret is the greater, because no representation of the bard is so authentic. The portrait in the first folio, 1623, although it receives the tribute of rare Ben, written, it may be, before he saw the engraving, is not a creditable work of art, but it ranks next to the bust in point of authority, and a general resemblance is to be traced between them.† Several paintings of Shakespeare have been produced, but the genuineness of most of them may be doubted, for fabrication has been as industrious with the poet's likeness as with his autograph. The Chandos portrait, in the posses

'Shakspeares and John Combes monumts. at Stratford sup' Avon made by one Gerard Johnson."-Dugdale's Diary, 1653, 4to. ed. 1827, p. 99. This diary is printed from a series of interleaved almanacs preserved in the collection of Dugdale Stratford Dugdale, Esq., M.P. at Merevale, co. Warw.

"Now if we compare this picture with the face on the Stratford monument, there will be found as great a resemblance as perhaps can well be betwixt a statue and a picture, except that the hair is described rather shorter and streighter on the latter than on the former."-Gent. Mag. 1759, p. 257.