He died in the 53d year of his age,' and was bu year 1618) than that delivered to Betterton or Rowe, almost a century afterwards. It has been already remarked, that two of the lines faid to have been produced on this occafion, were printed as an epigram in 1608, by H. P. Gent. and are likewife found in Camden's Remains, 1614. I may add, that a ufurer's folicitude to know what would be reported of him when he was dead, is not a very probable circumftance; neither was Shakspeare of a difpofition to compofe an invective, at once fo bitter and uncharitable, during a pleasant converfation among the common friends of himself and a gentleman, with whofe family he lived in fuch friendship, that at his death he bequeathed his fword to Mr. Thomas Con be as a legacy. A mifer's monument indeed, conftructed during his life-time, might be regarded as a challenge to fatire; and we cannot wonder that anonymous lampoons fhould have been affixed to the marble defigned to convey the character of fuch a being to pofterity. I hope I may be excufed for this attempt to vindicate Shakspeare from the imputation of having poifoned the hour of confidence and festivity, by producing the feverest of all cenfures on one of his company. I am unwilling, in fhort, to think he could fo wantonly and fo publickly have expreffed his doubts concerning the falvation of one of his fellow-creatures. STEEVENS. Since the above obfervations first appeared, (in a note to the edition of our author's Poems which I published in 1780,) I have obtained 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 poflibly throw fome light on this matter, and an examination of it fome years ago furnished me with such evidence as renders the ftory recorded in Braithwaite's Remains very doubtful; and ftill more ftrongly proves that, whoever was the author 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 firit rayfed, within one year after my deceafe, be fet over me." So much for Braithwaite's account of his having erected his own tomb in his life-time. That he had any quarrel with our author, or that Shakspeare had by any act ftung him fa feverely that Mr. Combe never forgave him, appears equally void of foundation; for by his will he bequeaths" to Mr. William Shakfpere 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 "to ried on the north fide of the chancel, in the great Shakfpere's Clofe." It must 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 caufe 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 witnefs 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. Sufanna Collins (probably godmother to our poet's eldest daughter) fix pounds, thirteen fhillings, and four-pence; to Mr. Henry Walker, (father to Shakfpeare'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 correfpondence 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 Braithwaite'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 executors, who did not prove the will till Nov. 1615, could not well have erected" a fair monument" of confiderable expence for thofe 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 feverity, gave vent to his feelings in the fatirical compofition preferved by Rowe; 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 church at Stratford, where a monument is placed 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 juftice to this gentleman it should be remembered, that in the language of Shakspeare's age an ujurer did not mean one who took exorbitant, but any, intereft or ufance for money; which many then confidered as criminal. The opprobricus 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. "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 brighteft ornament. The private note-book of his fon-in-law Dr. Hall,* containing a fhort state 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 laft illnefs, 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 earlieft cafe recorded by Hall, is dated in 1617. He had probably filled fome other book with memorandums of his practice in preceding years; which by fome contingency may hereafter be found, and inform pofterity of the particular circumftances that attended the death of our great poet. From the 34th page of this book, which contains an account of a diforder under which his daughter Elizabeth laboured (about Dr. Hall's pocket-book after his death fell into the hands of a furgeon of Warwick, who published a tranflation of it, (with fome additions of his own) under the title of Select Obfervations on the English bodies of eminent perfons, in desperate difeafes, &c. The third edition was printed in 1683. in the wall.* On his grave-ftone underneath is, "Good friend,3 for Jesus' fake forbear "To dig the dust inclosed here. "Bleft be the man that spares these stones, the year 1624,) and of the method of cure, it appears, that she 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 enterprise at that time of great pith and moment." 66 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 fweeteft 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 Regifter of that town that the plague broke out there on the 30th of the following June, and raged with fuch violence between that day and the laft 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 malignant 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 Register, 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 carried off more than a feventh part of them. Fortunately for mankind it did not reach the houfe in which the infant Shakfpeare lay; for not one of that name appears in the dead lift.--May we fuppofe, that, like Horace, 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 facra Lauroque, collataque myrto, Non fine Diis animofus infans. MALONE. under an arch, in a fitting pofture, a cufhion fpread before him, with a pen in his right-hand, and his left rested 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 habet. THEOBALD. The first fyllable in Socratem is here made fhort, which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we fhould read Sophoclem. Shakspeare is then appofitely compared with a dramatick author among the ancients: but ftill it fhould be remembered that the elogium is leffened while the metre is reformed; and it is well known that fome of our carly 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. ix. ft. 48, and c. x. ft. 3. To this Latin infcription on Shakspeare should be added the lines which are found underneath it on his monument : Stay, paffenger, why doft thou go fo faft? Read, if thou canft, whom envious death hath plac'd Far more than cost; since all that he hath writ Leaves living art but page to ferve his wit. æt. 53, die 23 Apri. STEEVENS. It appears from the Verfes of Leonard Digges that our author'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 author prefixed to the firft 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 bcft prints. Our poet's monument having been erected by his fonin-law Dr. Hall, the ftatuary probably had the affiftance of fome picture, and failed only from want of fkill to copy it. Mr. Granger obferves, (Bisg. Hift. Vol. I. p. 259,) that "it has 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 |