Dr. Chalmers and the other chiefs of the Free Church of Scotland, with the Rev. Dr. David Welsh for its first editor; and, as it aimed at conjoining the utmost freedom and variety in the literary department with the advocacy of its special set of ecclesiastical principles, it was not likely to neglect the chance of securing an occasional contribution from an Edinburgh resident of such supreme literary distinction as De Quincey. Though I had heard it reported, however, that De Quincey had been a contributor to the North British Review, my inquiries on the subject some time ago had left me in doubt; and it has been only in the course of editing the present volume that I have ascertained the exact particulars. In the year 1848, when the Review was under the editorship of Dr. Chalmers's son-in-law, the late Rev. Dr. William Hanna, De Quincey, I find, did furnish it with three articles. The first of these, published in the number for May 1848, was that paper on Oliver Goldsmith which is the only paper in the present volume not already accounted for. It was with some natural interest that, on looking at an old copy of the number containing this first contribution of De Quincey to the North British Review, I found that the very next article to it in that number was my own first contribution to the same periodical. DAVID MASSON.

SHAKSPEARE 1

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE,2 the protagonist on the great arena of modern poetry, and the glory of the human intellect, was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, in the year 1564, and upon some day, not precisely ascertained, in the month of April. It is certain that he was baptized on the 25th; and from that fact, combined with some shadow of a tradition, Malone has inferred that he was born

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1 Contributed in 1838 to the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and republished in 1863 in Vol. XV of Messrs. A. & C. Black's Sixteen Volume Edition of De Quincey's Works, with a prefatory note containing this quotation from a letter of De Quincey's, of date July 16, 1838 :-"No paper ever cost me so much labour: parts "of it have been recomposed three times over. And thus far I an"ticipate your approval of this article, that no one question has been "neglected which I ever heard of in connexion with Shakespeare's name; and I fear no rigour of examination, notwithstanding I have "had no books to assist me but the two volumes lent me by yourself "(viz. 1st vol. of Alex. Chalmers's edit. 1826, and the late popular "edit. in one vol. by Mr. Campbell). The Sonnets I have been "obliged to quote by memory, and for many of my dates or other "materials to depend solely on my memory." In a subsequent letter, the same prefatory note informs us, he repeated the statement thus :"The Shakspeare article cost me more intense labour than any I ever "wrote in my life. The final part has cost me a vast deal of labour "in condensing; and I believe, if you examine it, you will not com"plain of want of novelty, which luckily was in this case quite "reconcilable with truth,-so deep is the mass of error which has gathered about Shakspeare."-M.

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2 See, at the end of this paper, De Quincey's appended note on the spelling of the name.-M.

VOL. IV

on the 23d. There is doubtless, on the one hand, no absolute necessity deducible from law or custom, as either operated in those times, which obliges us to adopt such a conclusion; for children might be baptized, and were baptized, at various distances from their birth: yet, on the other hand, the 23d is as likely to have been the day as any other; and more likely than any earlier day, upon two arguments. First, because there was probably a tradition floating in the seventeenth century that Shakspeare died upon his birthday: now it is beyond a doubt that he died upon the 23d of April. Secondly, because it is a reasonable presumption that no parents, living in a simple community, tenderly alive to the pieties of household duty, and in an age still clinging reverentially to the ceremonial ordinances of religion, would much delay the adoption of their child into the great family of Christ. Considering the extreme frailty of an infant's life during its two earliest years, to delay would often be to disinherit the child of its Christian privileges: privileges not the less eloquent to the feelings from being profoundly mysterious, and, in the English Church, forced not only upon the attention, but even upon the eye, of the most thoughtless. According to the discipline of the English Church, the unbaptized are buried with "maimed rites," shorn of their obsequies, and sternly denied that "sweet and solemn farewell" by which otherwise the Church expresses her final charity with all men; and not only so, but they are even locally separated and sequestrated. Ground the most hallowed, and populous with Christian burials of households

"That died in peace with one another,
Father, sister, son, and brother,"

opens to receive the vilest malefactor; by which the Church symbolically expresses her maternal willingness to gather back into her fold those even of her flock who have strayed from her by the most memorable aberrations; and yet, with all this indulgence, she banishes to unhallowed ground the innocent bodies of the unbaptized. To them and to suicides she turns a face of wrath. With this gloomy fact offered to the very external senses, it is difficult to suppose that any parents would risk their own reproaches by putting the

fulfilment of so grave a duty on the hazard of a convulsion fit. The case of royal children is different; their baptisms, it is true, were often delayed for weeks; but the household chaplains of the palace were always at hand, night and day, to baptize them in the very agonies of death.1 We must presume, therefore, that William Shakspeare was born on some day very little anterior to that of his baptism; and the more so because the season of the year was lovely and genial, the 23d of April in 1564 corresponding in fact with what we now call the 3d of May, so that, whether the child was to be carried abroad, or the clergyman to be summoned, no hindrance would arise from the weather. One only argument has sometimes struck us for supposing that the 22d might be the day, and not the 23d; which is, that Shakspeare's sole grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, was married on the 22d of April 1626, ten years exactly from the poet's death; and the reason for choosing this day might have had a reference to her illustrious grandfather's birthday; which, there is good reason for thinking, would be celebrated as a festival in the family for generations. Still this choice may have been an accident, or governed merely by reason of convenience. And, on the whole, it is as well perhaps to acquiesce in the old belief that Shakspeare was born and died on the 23d of April. We cannot do wrong if we drink to his memory on both 22d and 23d.

On a first review of the circumstances, we have reason to feel no little perplexity in finding the materials for a life of this transcendent writer so meagre and so few, and amongst

1 But, as a proof that, even in the case of royal christenings, it was not thought pious to "tempt God," as it were, by delay :-Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, was born on the 12th day of October in the year 1537; and there was a delay on account of the sponsors, since the birth was not in London. Yet how little that delay was made may be seen by this fact: The birth took place in the dead of the night; the day was Friday; and yet, in spite of all delay, the christening was most pompously celebrated on the succeeding Monday. And Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII, was christened on the very next Sunday succeeding to his birth, notwithstanding an inevitable delay occasioned by the distance of Lord Oxford, his godfather, and the excessive rains, which prevented the earl being reached by couriers, or himself reaching Winchester, without extraordinary

exertions.