WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

1564-1616.

NOTWITHSTANDING the investigations of scores of scholars and antiquarians, little is known of the early life of Shakespeare. No history records the successive steps by which he rose from the lowest depths of poverty and obscurity to the loftiest summits of intellect and fame.

His parents were illiterate, rarely, if ever, writing a word, but content to make their mark when called on for their signatures to any paper. His mother's name was Arden, a surname adopted by the Turchills, a family of some note that traced their lineage beyond the Norman conquest. Shakespeare is an old Warwickshire word. Lowell thinks that "one lobe of William's brain was Normanly refined, and the other Saxonly sagacious;" but other scholars will have it that he was purely Saxon. If we may confide in the accuracy of the painter of his bust, which had been colored to the life before Edmund Malone stultified himself by whitening it in imitation of marble, his eyes were of a light hazel color, his complexion fair, and his hair and beard auburn.

His mother had inherited some property. His father was a man of business; at various times, or perhaps all at once, farmer, wool-comber, butcher, and glover. In the little world of Stratford, he held successively the offices of "ale-taster," bailiff, justice of the peace, and chief alderman. At the age of thirteen, William found himself the oldest of thirteen living children, two sisters, born before him, having died in infancy.

In the Stratford free grammar-school, open to William at the age of seven, he probably acquired some knowledge of Latin and Greek, in addition to the common English branches. His extraordinary vocabulary, far surpassing in fullness and accuracy that of any other writer in any age, proves him to have been a most diligent student of language; while his learning in metaphysics, literature, logic, art, law, medicine, navigation, history, politics, mythology, shows him unequalled in keenness of observation, and in power of acquiring, classifying, and assimilating.

Doubtless the first twelve years of his life passed happily enough amid the comfort and respectability of home. But clouds now gathered. The little property which William's mother had brought her husband, was slowly dissipated. Unable to support his growing family, the father sank deeper and deeper in poverty. Though nominally an alderman, he for seven years dared not attend the meetings of the board, for fear of being arrested for debt. Skulking and hiding from constables, he was at length seized in 1587 and lodged in debtor's jail.

The distress of this once proud and respectable family must have been terrible. Mother and younger children naturally looked to the oldest boy, bright, strong, brave William, just entering manhood. Who knows but that the agonies of those nearest and dearest to him wrought in his sensitive spirit a determination to conquer all obstacles, and lift the family out of suffering and disgrace? The prodigious intellectual energies that he afterwards exhibited, must have had some great impelling force behind them, holding him to his work as with a giant's strength. Here may have been the source of his inspiration.