As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse. And how pure and noble is that 116th Sonnet, in which he writes "Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd." The course of Shakespeare's after-life took him much away from Stratford; but, for aught that is known to the contrary, he generally left his wife and children there, being unwilling, perhaps, to expose them to the perils of that society in which he was obliged to mingle in London. We are not entitled to suppose that he had any cause to complain of domestic unhappiness. He paid regular visits to Stratford, and "the wife of his youth was the com panion of his latest years." He had three childrenSusannah, Hamnet, and Judith-the two last being twins. Susannah was born in May, 1583, and the other two in January, 1585. The date of the birth of the first child being within seven months of the date of the marriage, has led to some scandalous gossip. But an error of some months may have crept into the dates; and if it has not, we at all events know that Shakespeare behaved with honour, and kept the troth he had plighted. His son Hamnet died in 1596, when he was eleven years and six months old. The two daughters grew up to womanhood, married, and survived their father a number of years. They must have been well educated and well brought up; for they both obtained good husbands, and lived in the respect and esteem of those who knew them. Susannah married, in 1607, John Hall, a physician of considerable repute; and when she died, in 1649, it was recorded on her tombstone, apparently with truth, that she was "witty above her sex," and "wise to salvation." She was the mother of only one child, Elizabeth, who was born in February, 1608,-so that the poet became a grandfather at forty-five. His granddaughter married, in 1626, Mr. Thomas Nash, a country gentleman of independent fortune. On his death, in 1647, she again married, in 1649, Sir John Barnard, Knight, of Abington. She died in 1670, and left no issue by either of her husbands. Judith, Shakespeare's younger daughter, married Mr. Thomas Quiney, a vintner or wine merchant at Stratford, a c month or two before her father's death. She had by him three children; but they all died young; and she herself followed them to the grave in 1662. The death, therefore, of Lady Barnard, in 1670, terminated the lineal descendants of Shakespeare. The collateral kindred, through his sister Joan, had a much longer succession; but it, too, came to an end about forty years ago. Joan married, in 1599, William Hart, an honest tradesman, to whom she bore children; and they and their descendants continued to live at Stratford for two hundred and thirty years. None of the family ever achieved any distinction, except a grandchild, Charles Hart, who rose as an actor to the first honours of the stage. The last of the Harts was an aged maiden, who, in 1825, occupied the house in which her great ancestor was born, and showed visitors some relics, together with a manuscript play written by herself, but of very humble merit. It was something, however, to see the last link in a chain, at the farther end of which Shakespeare had been. In less than four years after his marriage, when he was twenty-two years of age,- —a young husband and a young father, he determined on going to London to push his fortune. There is a story, which is now almost stereotyped into his biography, that he was induced to take this step in consequence of having got himself into trouble by some unlawful meddling with the deer in the parks of Fullbroke or Charlecote, belonging to Sir Thomas Lucy, a neighbouring country gentleman. That Shakespeare knew every nook and corner, every sequestered dingle and romantic recess of those old woods; that he had a thousand times dived into their depths, and made himself familiar with all the winged and four-footed animals that inhabited them, treasuring up those fancies and visions to which he afterwards gave such exquisite realization in his "As You Like It,” no one need doubt. But that Shakespeare ever crossed the green paths as a vulgar stealer of deer, was ever convicted of theft, and personally chastised for it, is a base and idle tale, to be treated with the "summary indignation" which De Quincey has so well bestowed upon it. In the first place, it seems to be ascertained, through the researches of Malone, that though Sir Thomas Lucy had noble and extensive grounds, he had no deer park, and no deer. In the next place, if it is necessary to say more, the only punishment which could be imposed under the statute then in force (the 5th of Elizabeth, cap. 21) for the suppression of deer-stealing was imprisonment for three months, and a fine payable to the party offended. Whipping was out of the question; and there is not the slightest tradition or rumour that Shakespeare was ever imprisoned. Not one of his literary rivals, some of whom tried to pick flaws in him at first, ever twitted him with any such offence or its consequences. In the third place, Sir Thomas Lucy was High Sheriff of Warwickshire, and Shakespeare was the oldest son of a chief magistrate of Stratford, with whom it is more than probable the Sheriff was on familiar terms, and it is therefore most improbable that the one would commit the offence, or the other prosecute it. Rowe, his first biographer, is responsible for having given circulation to the calumny, without any sufficient warrant. He says, with much coolness, and a sort of vulgar familiarity,-"Shakespeare had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy." Aubrey, an older authority than Rowe, is wholly silent on this scandal; but a scribbler of the name of Davies improves considerably upon Rowe's version. He says,-" Shakespeare was much given to all unlawfulness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipped, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country." And thus the rolling stone gathered moss, in spite of the proverb; and then there came an adjunct to it, that the first verses Shakespeare ever wrote were a lampoon on Sir Thomas, and that these bred him further grief. The verses are still more apochryphal than the story. They were produced for the first time so late as 1778, by Steevens, from the manuscript of the antiquary Oldys, who died in 1761. They are stupid and vulgar, beginning with the lines, "A parliamente member, a justice of peace, At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse;" which, as De Quincey remarks, resemble more a production of Charles II.'s reign, and were no doubt |