OF A PRECISE TAILOR.

FROM SIR JOHN HARRINGTON'S EPIGRAMS.

A TAILOR, thought a man of upright dealing-
True, but for lying-honest, but for stealing,
Did fall one day extremely sick by chance,
And on the sudden was in wond'rous trance;
The fiends of hell, mustering in fearful manner,
Of sundry colour'd silks display'd a banner
Which he had stolen, and wish'd, as they did tell,
That he might find it all one day in hell.
The man, affrighted with this apparition,
Upon recovery grew a great precisian :
He bought a Bible of the best translation,
And in his life he show'd great reformation;
He walked mannerly, he talked meekly,

He heard three lectures and two sermons weekly;
He vow'd to shun all company unruly,
And in his speech he used no oath; but truly

And zealously to keep the sabbath's rest,
His meat for that day on the eve was drest;
And lest the custom which he had to steal
Might cause him sometimes to forget his zeal,
He gives his journeymen a special charge,
That if the stuff, allowance being large,
He found his fingers were to filch inclined,
Bid him to have the banner in his mind.
This done (I scant can tell the rest for laughter)
A captain of a ship came three days after,
And brought three yards of velvet and three
quarters,

To make Venetians down below the garters.
He, that precisely knew what was enough,
Soon slipt aside three quarters of the stuff;
His man, espying it, said, in derision,
Master, remember how you saw the vision!
Peace, knave! quoth he, I did not see one rag
Of such a colour'd silk in all the flag.

Was born in 1581, and perished in the Tower of London, 1613, by a fate that is too well known. The compassion of the public for a man of worth, "whose spirit still walked unrevenged amongst them," together with the contrast of his ideal Wife with the Countess of Essex, who was his murderess, attached an interest and popularity to his poem, and made it pass through sixteen editions before the year 1653. His Characters, or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of sundry Persons, is a work of considerable merit; but unfortunately his prose, as well as his verse, has a dry

ness and quaintness that seem to oppress the natural movement of his thoughts. As a poet, he has few imposing attractions: his beauties must be fetched by repeated perusal. They are those of solid reflection, predominating over, but not extinguishing, sensibility; and there is danger of the reader neglecting, under the coldness and ruggedness of his manner, the manly but unostentatious moral feeling that is conveyed in his maxims, which are sterling and liberal, if we can only pardon a few obsolete ideas on female education.

For patience is, of evils that are known,
The certain remedy; but doubt hath none.
And be that thought once stirr'd, 'twill never die,
Nor will the grief more mild by custom prove,
Nor yet amendment can it satisfy;
The anguish more or less is as our love;

This misery doth from jealousy ensue,
That we may prove her false, but cannot true...
Give me, next good, an understanding wife,
By nature wise, not learned by much art;
Some knowledge on her part will, all her life,
More scope of conversation impart;
Besides her inborn virtue fortify;

They are most firmly good that best know why.
A passive understanding to conceive,
And judgment to discern, I wish to find;
Beyond that all as hazardous I leave;
Learning and pregnant wit, in womankind,
What it finds malleable (it) makes frail,
And doth not add more ballast, but more sail.
Books are a part of man's prerogative;
In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold,
That we to them our solitude may give,
And make time present travel that of old;
Our life fame pieceth longer at the end,
And books it farther backward do extend....
So fair at least let me imagine her;
That thought to me is truth. Opinion

Cannot in matters of opinion err;

And as my fancy her conceives to be,
Ev'n such my senses both do feel and see.....
Beauty in decent shape and colour lies;
Colours the matter are, and shape the soul;
The soul-which from no single part doth rise,
But from the just proportion of the whole :-
And is a mere spiritual harmony
Of every part united in the eye.
No circumstance doth beauty fortify
Like graceful fashion, native comeliness;
But let that fashion more to modesty
Tend than assurance-Modesty doth set
The face in her just place, from passion free;
"Tis both the mind's and body's beauty met.
All these good parts a perfect woman make;
Add love to me, they make a perfect wife;
Without her love, her beauty I should take
As that of pictures dead-that gives it life;
Till then her beauty, like the sun, doth shine
Alike to all;-that only makes it mine.

[MR. CAMPBELL gave us no history or opinion of Shakspeare, in his specimens of the British Poets, but he prefixed to Moxon's edition of the works of the great dramatist an elaborate biography and criticism, of which the present editor makes the following abridgment.]

Shakspeare's father, John Shakspeare, was a glover in Stratford; that this was his main trade has been completely ascertained by Mr. Malone. He seems, however, to have been a speculative tradesman; he farmed meadow-land, and may possibly have traded in wool and cattle, as has been alleged; but the tradition of his having been a butcher is entitled to no credit, for, if he sold gloves, it is not very likely that he had either another shop, or the same shop with shambles before it.

Our great poct, the eldest son and the third child of his parents, was born at Stratford in the month of April, 1564, probably on the twentythird of the month, says Mr. Malone, because he was baptized on the twenty-fifth. When he was but nine weeks old the plague visited Stratford, and carried off more than a seventh part of the population, but the door-posts of our sacred infant, like those of the Israelites in Egypt, were sprinkled so as to be passed by by the destroying angel, and he was spared.

No anecdotes of his earliest years have been preserved. All the education he ever received was probably at the free school of Stratford; but at what age he was placed there, or how long he remained, are points that can be only conjectured. That Shakspeare was not a classical scholar, may be taken for granted; but that he learned some

Latin at the free school of Stratford, is conceded even by those who estimate his classic acquirements at the lowest rate; even allowing, as seems to be ascertained, that he derived his plots, in the main, from translations of books.

Shakspeare's learning, whatever it was, gave him hints as to sources from which classical information was to be drawn. The age abounded in classical translations; it also teemed with public pageants, and Allegory itself might be said to have walked the streets. He may have laughed at the absurdity of many of those pageants, but still they would refresh his fancy. Whether he read assiduously or carelessly, it should be remembered that reading was to him not of the vulgar benefit that it is to ordinary minds. Was there a spark of sense or sensibility in any author, on whose works he glanced, that spark assimilated to his soul, and it belonged to it as rightfully as the light of heaven to the eye of the eagle.

Malone calls in question Rowe's assertion that our poet was recalled from school merely on account of his father's circumstances, and in order to assist him in his own trade; and says, it is more likely that he was taken away with a view to his learning some business, in which he might afterwards maintain himself. My own suspicions however is, that his father recalled him in order to assist him in his own business.

Whatever his occupation was, between the time of his leaving school and his going to London, it is certain that he married in the interim. His choice was Anne Hathaway, who was then in her twenty-sixth year, he, the boy poet, being only eighteen years and some months, and conse

quently nearly eight years younger than his spouse.

Shakspeare's marriage bond is dated, according to Malone, the 28th of November, 1582. In May, 1583, his wife brought him a daughter, who was named Susanna, and was baptized the 26th of May of the same year. If this was the case, the poet's first child would appear to have been born only six months and eleven days after the bond was entered into. If Mr. Malone be correct, as to the date of her birth in the Stratford register, Miss Susanna Shakspeare came into the world a little prematurely.

One of the first misfortunes that is alleged to have befallen our poet in his married life, has certainly no appearance of having originated in his marriage. "Shakspeare," says his biographer, Rowe, "had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and amongst them some that made a practice of deerstealing engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. For this," continues Rowe, "he was prosecuted by that gentleman, and in revenge he made a ballad upon him. The ballad itself is lost; but it was so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him, insomuch that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire, and to shelter himself in London."

Of this lampoon, only one passage that is extant is believed to be genuine, and that one would do no great honour to the muse even of a poacher. Mr. Malone discredits the whole story of the deerstealing, and he is probably right in scouting Davies's exaggeration of it, namely, that our poet was whipped for the offence. But, false as the alleged punishment may be, it by no means follows that the anecdote of the theft, and of a threatened prosecution, must needs be incredible. The story is not one that we should exactly wish to be true, but still it was only a youthful frolic, and a prank very common among young men of those days.

Most probably for that reason he removed from Warwickshire to London, unaccompanied by wife or child, a few years after his marriage: it is generally thought in 1586 or 1587.

He now embraced the profession of a player. Plays he must have seen acted at Stratford, and some of the best of the then living actors, such as the elder Burbage, Heminge, and Thomas Green, who were in all probability personally known to him. The first of these Thespian heroes were the countrymen of Shakspeare, the last was certainly his townsman, and perhaps his relation.

Rowe says that Shakspeare was received into the company in a very mean rank. It has also been said, probably on the faith of Rowe's assertion, that he was employed as the call-boy, whose business is to give notice to the performers when their different entries on the stage are required. Another tradition is, that he used to hold the horses of those who rode to the theatre without attendants.

But the probability of Shakspeare's ever having been either a call-boy or a horse-holder, has never, in latter years, received much belief; and it has been completely put to discredit by Mr. Collier, who has proved by documents of his own discovery, that Shakspeare, in 1589, a very few years after the earliest date that can be assigned to his arrival in London, was among the proprietors of the very theatre in which he is alleged to have been once a call-boy; and from this fact it must be at least concluded, that if he was at first received in a mean rank, he made a rapid acquisition of theatrical consequence.

My own suspicion is quite adverse to his having been a novice, and meanly received on the London stage. The inhabitants of Stratford were great lovers of theatrical amusements; companies of the best comedians visited them during the youth of our poet, at least, on an average, once a year. From childhood to manhood, his attention must have been drawn to the stage, and there is every probability that he knew the best He was probably a handsome man, and certainly an exquisite judge of acting; he was past the age at which we can conceive him to have been either a call-boy, or a horse-holder. Upon the whole it may be presumed that he was a good actor, though not of the very highest excellence; a circumstance perhaps not to be regretted, for if he had performed as well as he wrote, his actorship might have interfered with his authorship.

actors.

An interesting subject of inquiry in Shakspeare's literary history, is the state of English dramatic poetry when he began his career. Before his time mere mysteries and miracle plays, in which Adam and Eve appeared naked, in which the devil displayed his horns and tail, and in which Noah's wife boxed the patriarch's ears before entering the ark, had fallen comparatively into disuse, after a popularity of four centuries; and, in the course of the sixteenth century, the clergy were forbidden by orders from Rome to perform them. Meanwhile "Moralities," which had made their appearance about the middle of the fifteenth century, were also hastening their retreat, as well as those pageants and masques in honour of royalty which, nevertheless, aided the introduction of the drama. We owe our first regular dramas to the universities, the inns of court, and public seminaries. The scholars of these establishments engaged in free translations of classic dramatists, though with so little taste that Seneca was one of their favourites. They caught the coldness of that model, however, without the feeblest trace of his slender graces; they looked at the ancients without understanding them, and they brought to their plots neither unity, design, nor affecting interest. There is a general similarity among all the plays that preceded Shakspeare, in their ill-conceived plots, in the bombast and dullness of tragedy, and in the vulgar buffoonery of comedy.

Of our great poet's immediate predecessors, the most distinguished were Lyly, Peele, Greene. Kyd, Nash, Lodge, and Marlowe. Marlowe was the only great man among Shakspeare's precur

M

sors; his conceptions were strong and original; nis intellect grasped his subject as a whole: no doubt he dislocated the thews of his language by overstrained efforts at the show of strength, but he delineated character with a degree of truth unknown to his predecessors; his "Edward the Second" is pathetic, and his "Faustus" has real grandeur. If Marlowe had lived, Shakspeare might have had something like a competitor.

Shakspeare commenced his career twenty years after our drama had acquired a local habitation, as well as a name: after scholars and singingboys had ceased to be exclusive performers, and when school-rooms, university-halls, the inns of court, the mansions of nobility, and the palaces of royalty were no longer the only theatres of exhibition. Plays, it is true, were still acted, even at a late period of Elizabeth's reign, in churches, chapels, and noble houses, and even regularly licensed comedians exhibited their theatrical glories in the court-yards of inns. But when Shakspeare came to London, our metropolis had regular licensed theatres and theatrical compa

nies.

There is every reason to believe that Shakspeare commenced his career as a dramatic author, by adapting the works of preceding writers to the stage. Before the end of 1592, he had certainly been thus employed; in that year Greene died, and left for publication his "Groat's-worth of Wit," in which, alluding evidently to Shakspeare, he says, "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in a country."

It is probable, however, that Shakspeare had already made some, though few, attempts as an original dramatist; in the meantime, there is reason to suspect that he may have written some of those undramatic poems which apparently raised his reputation very high, whilst his dramatic renown was yet in the dawn. He himself calls his "Venus and Adonis" the first heir of his invention: that poem appeared in 1593, and the "Rape of Lucrece" in the following year. The luxuriance of the former poem is prurient-the morality of the latter is somewhat dull; yet they acquired him reputation, not only before some of his better dramas had appeared, but even afterwards.

His "Sonnets," and "A Lover's Complaint," were published together in 1609. Several of his sonnets had certainly been composed many years before that date, for Meres, in 1598, alludes to "Shakspeare's sugared sonnets among his friends." They appear to have been thrown off at different periods of his life.

Some of those effusions, though not all, seem to me worthy of Shakspeare. Among the most admirable are the eighth, the thirtieth, and, above all, the hundred and twenty-third—

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, &c.

This, of a truth, is Shakspeare's own: it is Love looking at his own image in the stream of poetry. As a whole, however, these sonnets are no more

to our poet's fame, than a snow-ball on the top of Olympus.

Another of Shakspeare's undramatic poems is a "Lover's Complaint." It has many beauties mixed with as many conceits. "The Forsaken Maiden," in describing her lover, conjures up a being that seems to be Shakspeare himself:For, on the tip of his subduing tongue,

All kinds of arguments and questions deep; All replications prompt, and reasons strong, For his advantage still did wake and sleep, To make the weeper laugh-the laugher weep. In the miscellany of the "Passionate Pilgrim," some portion of the poetry is said to have been written by our bard; but this miscellany seems to have gone to the press without Shakspeare's consent, or even his knowledge, and how much of it proceeded from his pen cannot now be discovered.

We have indications of his having become, at no tardy period, pretty prosperous in London. Within a very few years he had a small share in the theatre which he joined, and in 1596 he was a very considerable shareholder. There are proofs also of his having been at the latter period a popular dramatic writer, universally admired, and already patronized by some of the first noblemen of the land, among whom were the Lords Southampton and Pembroke. There is no evidence, to be sure, that he ever received any solid patronage from Queen Elizabeth, but there is every reason to suppose that she highly appreciated his genius. It is little doubted that James I. wrote to him with his own hand a friendly letter, perhaps, as Dr. Farmer suggests, in consequence of the compliment to the Stuart family, which Shakspeare paid in the tragedy of Macbeth. The crown of England had scarcely fallen on James's head, when he granted his royal patent to our poet and his company of the Globe; thus raising them from being the lord chamberlain's servants to be the servants of the king. The patent is dated on the 29th of May, 1603, and the name of Shakspeare stands second on the list of patentees.

In the midst of his London prosperity, we should not forget the tradition of his wit and hilarity at the Mermaid, a celebrated tavern in Friday-street. Here there was a club of genial spirits, to which regularly repaired Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, Donne, and many others whose names, even at this distant period, call up a mingled feeling of reverence and respect.

It is pretty certain, as I have already stated, that Shakspeare began his career in dramatic poetry by altering, and adapting for the stage, plays that had been previously written. In the opinion of the best judges there is more than one drama, published in the popular editions of his works, in which he could have had little or no share. One of these is "Titus Andronicus," a tragedy not without some traits of merit, but too revolting in its general conception to be the credible fruit of Shakspeare's genius. Even independently of its horrors, it has an air in its poetry, and a tone in its versification, which is not Shaksperian. Individual passages have smooth rhythm and pointed

expression; but not the broad freedom and effect in harmonious language that characterize Shakspeare.

Six other plays, viz., The Arraignment of Paris, The Birth of Merlin, Edward III., The Fair Emma, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, and Mucedorus, are found entered on the books of the London stationers, as written by William Shakspeare; but these, and some others which have been fathered on our poet, are regarded as spurious, in spite of Schlegel's credulity on the subject.

A different opinion attends the play of Pericles, of which Dryden says, that "Shakspeare's own muse his Pericles first bore;" and the credibility of this tradition is not weakened by the fact that Heminge and Condell, the first editors of the poet's works, omitted "Pericles" in their edition; for it happens that they omitted "Troilus and Cressida," a play which nobody doubts to have been Shakspeare's.

I am glad that we may safely reject the "First Part of Henry VI." from the list of Shakspeare's genuine plays, when I think of that infernal scene in the fifth act, the condemnation of Joan of Arc to be burnt alive.

Malone assigns both the "Second and Third Parts of Henry VI." to the year 1591. In both parts there are such obvious traces of Shakspeare's genius, particularly in the Second Part, that we must suppose them to have been written principally by him. They are both, to be sure, alterations of older plays; but it has been well observed that the antecedent pieces received from our poet's hand "a thorough repair."

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To the same date, 1591, Mr. Malone ascribes the Two Gentlemen of Verona." It is plain from this piece that Shakspeare was yet very far from having arrived at the maturity of his art; but it shows us the young poet in bounding high spirits, getting through his subject, sometimes with graceful and sometimes with farcical glee. He unravels the plot, we are told, precipitately, and his characters are reconciled as friends too improbably.

When we come to his next comedy, "Love's Labour's Lost," (1592,) we are still far from finding him at the zenith of his inspiration; though this play is interspersed with Shakspearian bursts of poetry, and though it breathes, if possible, a still more reveling spirit than the "Two Gentlemen of Verona."

"Richard II." as well as "Richard III.," according to Malone's dates, appeared in 1593. The former tragedy is estimable for its pathos and skilful delineation of character.

In " Richard III.," (1593,) Shakspeare put forth a power of terrific delineation which, with the exception of the death-scene of Cardinal Beaufort, in the Second Part of Henry VI., he had never before displayed. This tragedy forms an epoch in the history of our poet and in that of dramatic poetry. In his preceding dramas he showed rather the suppleness than the knotted strength of his genius; but in the subtle cunning, the commanding courage, the lofty pride and ambition,

the remorselessness of the third Richard, and in the whole sublime depravity of his character, he reminds us of the eulogium passed by Fuseli on Michael Angelo, who says, that Michael could stamp sublimity on the hump of a dwarf. So complete was this picture of human guilt, that Milton, in seeking for a guilty hero, was obliged to descend to the nether regions.

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The "Merchant of Venice," (in 1594,) was a long and forward stride of Shakspeare's progress in the drama. Here, as in "Richard III.," we see the giant in his seven-league boots, and he is now grown to a maturity of art and strength, from which still greater miracles are yet to be expected. Of all his works, the Midsummer Night's Dream" (1594) leaves the strongest impression on my mind, that this miserable world must have, for once at least, contained a happy man. This play is so purely delicious, so little intermixed with the painful passions from which poetry distils her sterner sweets, so fragrant with hilarity, so bland and yet so bold, that I cannot imagine Shakspeare's mind to have been in any other frame than that of healthful ecstasy when the sparks of inspiration thrilled through his brain in composing it.

In the Taming of the Shrew," (1596,) we have no new triumph of Shakspeare's absolute invention; for in 1594, a play called "the Taming of a Shrew," was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, and the plot of that elder piece is in the main a rude fore-image of Shakspeare's play.

In "Romeo and Juliet," (1596,) there is a much larger pretension to originality. It is true that the mere story of the play can be traced to much earlier narrators. Yet, what does his possession of those undramatized materials derogate from his merit as a dramatist? The structure of the play is one of the most regular in his theatre, and its luxury of language and imagery were all his own. The general, the VAGUELY general conception of two young persons having been desperately in love, had undoubtedly been imparted to our poet by his informants; but who among them had conceived the finely-depicted progress of Juliet's impassioned character, in her transition from girlish confidence in the sympathy of others -to the assertion of her own superiority over their vulgar minds in the majesty of her despair? To eulogize this luxuriant drama, however, would be like gilding refined gold.

Henry IV. Part 1st," (1597,) may challenge the world to produce another more original and rich in characters: the whole zodiac of theatrical genius has no constellation with so many bright and fixed stars of the first magnitude as are here grouped together.

"King John" (1596 according to Malone, 1598 according to Dyce) was founded on a former drama, entitled "The troublesome Raigne of King John of England, with the Discoverie of King Richard Caur-de-lion's base son, vulgarly named the Bastard Faulconbridge; also the death of King John at Swinstead Abbey as it was (sundrie times)