meek fimplicity of heart congenial to those priages of the world

mitive

It happens, not a little whimsically, that with a few, and very infulated, exceptions, the mode of spelling this immortal name, which is now reprobated by the imperial edit of Edmond, has been prevalent from the earliest ages, till very much to his honour, my hero exploded the erratum, and banished the fuperfluous e by a talisman.*

It has been admitted by the Sergeant, who is very candid (in his theories) that "Sus: "PER COLL:" in a marginal note, was too laconic a rope for a capitally convicted felon's neck. But who would have thought a fuperfluous E, the favorite and plaything of two centuries, could be at once cut off, and for ever, by the words "IDLE BABBLE!" Yet fo it is-Lord Peter's reafoning, when he recommended, by a congé d'élire, the poetical (and Malonian) virtues of his brown loaf, could not be more fpirited. The argument of affertion, or of affertion loosely apparelled in a kind of reasoning undress, is the safest and the moft becoming.

Populumque falfis

Dedocet uti

Vocibus."

[Horace.

Pun

Pun of the name.

That SHAKESPEAR was originally the name we cannot " choose but infer," (to use the language of the poet) in that punning age, from the coat of arms connected with it, viz. a long "SPEAR,' to which the import of the word SHAKE is at leaft very applicable, and is, (by thofe who describe the use of this weapon), applied in fact.

It will appear, in support of the in fupport of the pun, before we are much older, that it was divided into the two parts of the compound idea which the name described and was written SHAKE-SPEAR,

Grant of arms.

But here I am corrected by Edmond in his herald's coat, who tells me, that in the original grant of this punning SPEAR, the intermediate e has been difallowed, and the pun annihilated.

None

None but himself can be his parallel.

Edmond thall anfwer Edmond.

In other words, the Edmond of one page refutes the Edmond of another.

"Et fibi fe gaudet præferri."

[I.] "SHAKESPEARE (fays Edmond) was called SHAXSPEARE, juft as BLAKESLEY was called "BLAXLEY."

If fo called, it is not improbable that it would have been fo written; or at least, with a similar caft of letters and conforming to that found,-by a mistaken reference to the oral delivery of the name, but without prejudice to its original ftamina, refiding and flourishing in the pun.

[2.] Nor is this all the evidence to the fame effect-Another Edmond is coming into the field, armed cap-à-pied, and fhaking this questionable Spear in his hand.

He is arguing (in his military fashion) whether Greene; in his Groatsworth of Wit, ed. A. D. 1592, had, or had not, "SHAKESPEAR” in his eye; and he infers that he had, because he gives to one of his dramatis perfona, the name of "SHAKESCENE", which he (Edmond) interprets into a covered and shadowed refemblance of the poet's But that refemblance it could not have been, if "SHAKSPEARE" had been the defcription by which the poet was marked in those days.

name.

[3.] Another objection to the argument arifing from this Grant of Arms to John Shakspeare, is the fact -that Edmond has again been a poet.-The name, to a herald's eye, is not Shakspeare, but Shakespeare.*

• COPY. "In the Patent of Arms, 20 Oct. 1596, to JOHN "SHAKESPEARE," the name is fpelt as above.

9

"G. Naylor, York Herald, 16 Jan. 1601." 1 N. B.

[ 78 ]

N. B. Edmond's poetical tranfcript of the fame original, purports to be a minute and clerical copy of the inftrument, witness the obfolete orthographies of" bayleffe"—" bedded."

N. B. Mr. Steevens obferves in a note, which Edmond has adopted in the very next page, upon the name of Arden, how unlikely it is that a name fhould be ill fpelt by heralds.The reafon affigned by him being a libel upon the College of Arms, I will not publish it.—¿qisauai.

Autograph.

But Edmond, the Editor of the Bard, smiles with contempt, at the air-beating Edmond (as he calls him) who is Dryden's biographer, by asking him (and me) "how the poet himself wrote his name?”

I answer "you, one of the Edmonds, have told the other Edmond, and me, that by the poet himself this letter was excluded from the name. But you have also affured us, and fince that sheet had been worked off (into a book circulated from hence to Japan,) "that SHAKESPEARE is the "name;" which appears to fhadow the inference, that be, as well as others, wrote it thus.

Yet fuch an answer will be nothing, till ApolloEdmond will tell us, (which I fufpect that he never means to do,) from his Delphic feat, which of his clafbing oracles he, at any given inflant of time, fhall prefer, or (as the Sergeant beautifully expreffes it)" by which of his pleas he will abide."

We must therefore canvas the argument arifing from the poet's habit of fpelling his name, as if the advantage ground of recourfe to it had been uniformly held forth by his Editor, though it is the reverfe of the fact.

Caprice

Caprice of autographs.

It happens, however, that in those days, men ́ did not write their names (of courfe) either as they should have written them, or as they were in fact written by their cotemporaries; or at other times, and with any other pens in their hand, by themselves.

TIBETOT.

I recollect (though I am any thing but an antiquarian) the name of Tibetot, a feudal peer, who wrote with an ariftocratic defiance of rule. It was half pride and half negligence-many of them could write nothing but their names, and fome

"Be upon your guard!" fays my legal friend," there is a modern House of Peers, and "they are jealous of their ancestors"] I ABSTAIN. άφιςαμαι

They held it an indication of dignity, that what they wrote as their name, should be a general fimilitude of the found, but with numberlefs varieties of inflexion.

This, of Tibetot, was, perhaps, the most prominent in whim; I cannot, with Malonian

precision,