an additional proof of what has been advanced, in vindication of Shakspeare on this fubject. It occurred to me that the will of John Combe might poffibly throw fome light on this matter, and an examination of it fome years ago furnished me with fuch evidence as renders the story recorded in Brathwaite's Remains very doubtful; and ftill more strongly proves that, whoever was the authour of this epitaph, it is highly improbable that it should have been written by Shakspeare. The very first direction given by Mr. Combe in his Will is, concerning a tomb to be erected to him after his death. "My will is, that a convenient tomb of the value of threefcore pounds fhall by my executors hereafter named, out of my goods and chattels firft rayfed, within one year after my deceafe, be fet over me.' So much for Brathwaite's account of his having erected his own tomb in his lifetime. That he had any quarrel with our authour, or that Shakspeare had by any act flung him fo feverely that Mr. Combe never forgave him, appears equally void of foundation; for by his will he bequeaths" to Mr. William Shakspere Five Pounds." It is probable that they lived in intimacy, and that Mr. Combe had made fome purchase from our poet; for he devifes to his brother George," the clofe or grounds known by the name of Parfon's Close, alias, Shakspere's Clofe.” It muft be owned that Mr. Combe's will is dated Jan. 28, 1612-13, about eighteen months before his death; and therefore the evidence now produced is not abfolutely decifive, as he might have erected a tomb, and a rupture might have happened between him and Shakspeare, after the making of this will: but it is very improbable that any fuch rupture fhould have taken place; for if the fuppofed cause of offence had happened fubfequently to the execution of the inftrument, it is to be prefumed that he would have revoked the legacy to Shakspeare: and the fame argument may be urged with refpect to the direction concerning his tomb. Mr. Combe by his will bequeaths to Mr. Francis Collins the elder, of the borough of Warwick, (who appears as a legatee and fubfcribing witness to Shakspeare's will, and therefore may be prefumed a common friend,) ten pounds; to his godfon John Collins, (the fon of Francis,) ten pounds; to Mrs. Susanna Collins (probably godmother to our poet's eldest daughter) fix pounds, thirteen fhillings, and four-pence; to Mr. Henry Walker, (father to Shakspeare's godfon,) twenty fhillings; to the poor of Stratford twenty pounds; and to his fervants, in various legacies, one hundred and ten pounds. He was buried at Stratford, July 12, 1614, and his will was proved, Nov. 10, 1615. Our author, at the time of making his will, had it not in his power to fhew any teftimony of his regard for Mr. Combe, that gentleman being then dead; but that he continued a friendly correspondence with his family to the laft, appears evidently (as Mr. Steevens has obferved) from his leaving his fword to Mr. Thomas Combe, the nephew, refiduary legatee, and one of the executors of John. On the whole we may conclude, that the lines preferved by Rowe, and inferted with fome variation in Brathwaite's Remains, which the latter has mentioned to have been affixed to Mr. Combe's tomb in his life-time, were not written till after Shakspeare's death; for the exe cutors, He died in the 53d year of his age, and was buried on the north fide of the chancel, in the great church at Stratford, cutors, who did not prove the will till Nov. 1615, could not well have erected a fair monument" of confiderable expence for those times, till the middle or perhaps the end of the year 1616, in the April of which year our poet died. Between that time and the year 1618, when Braithwaite's book appeared, fome one of thofe perfons (we may prefume) who had fuffered by Mr. Combe's severity, gave vent to his feelings in the fatirical compofition preferved by Rose; part of which, we have feen, was borrowed from epitaphs that had already been printed. That Mr. Combe was a money-lender, may be inferred from a claufe in his will, in which he mentions his "good and juft debtors}" to every one of whom he remits " twenty fhillings for every twenty pounds, and fo after this rate for a greater or leffer debt," on their paying in to his executors what they owe. Mr. Combe married Mrs. Rofe Clopton, August 27, 1560; and therefore was probably, when he died, eighty years old. His property, from the defcription of it, appears to have been confiderable. In justice to this gentleman it fhould be remembered, that in the language of Shakspeare's age an usurer did not mean one who took exorbitant, but any, intereft or ufance for money; which many then confidered as criminal. The opprobrious term by which fuch a perfon was diftinguished, Ten in the hundred, proves this; for ten per cent. was the ordinary intereft of money. See Shakspeare's will.-Sir Philip Sidney directs by his will, made in 1586, that Sir Francis Walfingham fhall put four thousand pounds which the teftator bequeathed to his daughter," to the beft behoofe either by purchase of land or leafe, or fome other good and godly use, but in no cafe to let it out for any ufury at all." MALONE. 2 He died in the 53d year of his age,] He died on his birth-day, April 23, 1616, and had exactly completed his fifty-fecond year. From Du Cange's Perpetual Almanack, Glofs. in v. Annus, (making allowance for the different ftyle which then prevailed in England from that on which Du Cange's calculation was formed,) it appears, that the 23d of April in that year was a Tuesday. No account has been tranfmitted to us of the malady which at fo early a period of life deprived England of its brightest ornament. The private note-book of his fon-in-law Dr. Hall, containing a fhort tate of the cafes of his patients, was a few years ago put into my hands by my friend, the late Dr. Wright; and as Dr. Hall married our poet's daughter in the year 1607, and undoubtedly attended Shakspeare in his last illness, being then forty years old, I had hopes this book might have enabled me to gratify the publick curiofity on this fubject. But unluckily the earliest cafe recorded by Hall, is dated in 1617. He had probably filled fome other book with memorandums of his practice in preceeding years; which by fome contingency may hereafter be found, and inform pofterity of the particular circum Stratford, where a monument, is placed in the wall3. Good friend, for Jesus' fake forbear Bleft be the man that spares these ftones, He ftances that attended the death of our great poet.-From the 34th page of this book, which contains an account of a disorder under which his daughter Elizabeth laboured, (about the year 1624,) and of the method of cure, it appears, that he was his only daughter; [Elizabeth Hall, filia mea unica, tortura oris defædata.] In the beginning of April in that year fhe vifited London, and returned to Stratford on the 22d; an enterprife at that time of great pith and moment.” While we lament that our incomparable poet was fnatched from the world at a time when his faculties were in their full vigour, and before he was "declined into the vale of years," let us be thankful that "this sweetest child of Fancy" did not perish while he yet lay in the cradle. He was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564; and I have this moment learned from the Register of that town that the plague broke cut there on the 30th of the following June, and raged with fuch violence between that day and the last day of December, that two hundred and thirty eight perfons were in that period carried to the grave, of which number probably 216 died of that ma lignant diftemper; and one only of the whole number refided, not in Stratford, but in the neighbouring town of Welcombe. From the 237 inhabitants of Stratford, whofe names appear in the Regifter, twenty-one are to be fubducted, who, it may be prefumed, would have died in fix months, in the ordinary courfe of nature; for in the five preceding years, reckoning, according to the ftyle of that time, from March 25, 1559, to March 25, 1564, two hundred and twenty one perfons were buried at Stratford, of whom 210 were townfmen: that is, of these latter 42 died each year, at an average. Suppofing one in thirty-five to have died annually, the total number of the inhabitants of Stratford at that period was 1470; and confequently the plague in the laft fix months of the year 1564 cartied off more than a seventh part of them. Fortunately for mankind it did not reach the house in which the infant Shakspeare lay; for not one of that name appears in the dead lift.-May we fuppofe, that, like Hcrace, he lay fecure and fearless in the midst of contagion and death, protected by the Mufes to whom his future life was to be devoted, and covered over Σ where a monument is placed in the wall.] He is reprefented. under an arch, in a fitting posture, a cushion spread before him, with a pen in his right-hand, and his left refted on a fcroll of paper. The following Latin diftich is engraved under the cushion. Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus mæret, Olympus babet.. THEOBALD. The first fyllable in Socratem is here made fhort, which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we fhould read Sophoclem. Shakspeare is then ap-' pofitely compared with a dramatick author among the ancients: but ftill it should be remembered that the elogium is leffened while the metre is reformed; and it is well known that fome of our early writers of Latin poetry were uncommonly negligent in their profody,' efpecially in proper names. The thought of this diftich, as Mr. Tollet obferves, might have been taken from the Faery Queene of Spenfer, b. ii. c. 9. ft. 48, and c. 10. ft. 3. To this Latin infcription on Shakspeare thould be added the lines which are found underneath it on his monument: Stay, paffenger, why doft thou go so fast? Read, if thou canft, whom envious death hath plac'd Obiit An°. Dži. 1616. æt. 53, die 23 Apri, STEEVENS. It appears from the Verfes of Leonard Digges that our authour's monument was erected before the year 1623. It has been engraved by Vertue, and done in Mezzotinto by Miller, A writer in The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. XXIX. p. 267, fays, there is as ftrong a refemblance between the buft at Stratford, and the portrait of our authour prefixed to the first folio edition of his plays, as can well be between a ftatue and a picture." To me (and I have viewed it feveral times with a good deal of attention) it appeared in a very different light. When I went laft to Stratford, I carried with me the only genuine prints of Shakspeare that were then extant, and I could not trace any refemblance between them and this figure. There is a pertnefs in the countenance of the latter totally differing from that placid compofure and thoughtful gravity, fo perceptible in his original portrait and his beft prints. Our poet's monument having been erected by his fon-in-law Dr. Hall, the ftatuary probably had the affiftance of fome picture, and failed only from want of skill to copy it. Mr. Granger obferves, (Biog. Hift. Vol. I. p. 259,) that "it bas been faid there never was an original portrait of Shakspeare, but that Sir Thomas Clarges after his death caufed a portrait to be drawn for him from a perfon who nearly refembled him." This entertaining writer was a great collector of anecdotes, but not always very fcrupu lous in inquiring into the authenticity of the information which he procured; for this improbable tale, I find, on examination, ftands A. only only on the affertion of an anonymous writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for Auguft 1759, who boldly " affirmed it as an abfolute fact;" but being afterwards publickly called upon to produce his authority, never produced any. There is the ftrongest reason therefore to prefume it a forgery. "Mr. Walpole" (adds Mr. Granger)" informs me, that the only original picture of Shakspeare is that which belonged to Mr. Keck, from whom it paffed to Mr. Nicoll, whofe only daughter married the Marquis of Caernarvon" [now duke of Chandos]. From this picture, his Grace, at my requeft, very obligingly permitted a drawing to be made by that excellent artist Mr. Ozias Humphry; and from that drawing the print prefixed to the present edition has been engraved. In the manufcript notes of the late Mr. Oldys, this portrait is faid to have been "painted by old Cornelius Janfen." "Others," he adds, "fay, that it was done by Richard Burbage the player;" and in another place he afcribes it to " John Taylor, the player." This Taylor, it is faid in the Critical Review for 1770, left it by will to Sir William D'Avenant. But unluckily there was no player of the christian and furname of John Taylor, contemporary with Shakspeare. The player who performed in Shakspeare's company, was Jofeph Taylor. There was however a painter of the name of John Taylor, to whom in his early youth it is barely poffible that we may have been indebted for the only original portrait of our authour; for in the Picture-Gallery at Oxford are two portraits of Taylor the Water-poet, and on each of them "John Taylor pinx. 1655." There appears fome refernblance of manner between thefe portraits and the picture of Shakspeare in the duke of Chandos's collection. That picture (I exprefs the opinion of Sir Joshua Reynolds) has not the least air of Cornelius Janfen's performances. That this picture was once in the poffeffion of Sir Wm. D'Avenant is highly probable; but it is much more likely to have been purchased by him from fome of the players after the theatres were fhut up by authority, and the veterans of the stage were reduced to great distress, than to have been bequeathed to him by the perfon who painted it; in whose custody it is improbable that it should have remained. Sir William D'Avenant appears to have died infolvent. There is no Will of his in the Prerogative-Office; but administration of his effects was granted to John Otway, his principal creditor, in May 1668. After his death, Betterton the actor bought it, probably at a publick fale of his effects. While it was in Betterton's poffeffion, it was engraved by Vandergucht, for Mr. Rowe's edition of Shakspeare, in 1709. Betterton made no will, and died very indigent. He had a large collection of portraits of actors in crayons, which were bought at the fale of his goods by Bullfinch the Printfeller, who fold them to one Mr. Sykes. The portrait of Shakspeare was purchased by Mrs. Barry the actress, who fold it afterwards for 40 guineas to Mr. Robert Keck. 1719, while it was in Mr. Keck's poffeffion, an engraving was made In from |
