ried on the north fide of the chancel, in the great improbable that any fuch rupture should 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 ar gument 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 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 show 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 Shakfpeare'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 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 preserved by Rowe; part of which, we have seen, was borrowed from epitaphs that had already been printed.-That Mr. Combe was a money-lender, may be inferred from a clause 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 church at Stratford, where a monument is placed for a greater or leffer debt," on their paying in to his executors what they owe. Mr. Combe married Mrs. Rofe Clopton, Auguft 27, 1560; and therefore was probably, when he died, eighty years old. His property, from the description of it, appears to have been confiderable. In justice to this gentleman it should be remembered, that in the language of Shakspeare's age an ufurer did not mean one who took exorbitant, but any, intereft or ufance for money; which many then confidered as criminal. The opprobious terms 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 thoufand pounds which the teftator bequeathed to his daughter, "to the best behoofe either by purchase of land or leafe, or some other good and godly use, but in no cafe to let it out for any ufury at all." MALone. * 1 He died in the 53d year of his age,] He died on his birthday, 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 short 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 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 prac tice in preceding years; which by fome contingency may hereafter be found, and inform pofterity of the particular circum * Dr. Hall's pocket-book after his death fell into the hands of a furgeon of Warwick, who published a translation of it, (with some additions of his own) under the title of Select Observations on the English Bodies of eminent Persons, in desperate Diseases, &c. The third edition was printed in 1683. in the wall. * On his grave-stone underneath is, "Good friend,3 for Jesus' fake forbear "Bleft be the man that spares these ftones, stances 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 she was his only daughter; [Elizabeth Hall, filia mea unica, tortura oris defædata.] In the beginning of April in that year fhe visited London, and returned to Stratford on the 22d; an enterprise 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-uponAvon in April 1564; and I have this moment learned from the Register 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 Regifter, twentyone are to be fubducted, who, it may be prefumed, would have died in fix months, in the ordinary course 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 last fix months of the year 1564 carried off more than a feventh 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 Horace, he lay fecure and fearless in the midft of contagion and death, protected by the Muses to whom his future life was to be devoted, and covered over 2 Lauroque, collataque myrto, "Non fine Diis animofus infans." MALONE. -where a monument is placed in the wall.] He is reprefented under an arch, in a fitting posture, a cushion fpread before him, with a pen in his right hand, and his left rested on a fcroll of paper. The following Latin distich is engraved under the cushion: Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 6 THEOBALD. The first syllable in Socratem is here made fhort, which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we should read Sophoclem. Shakspeare is then appofitely 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, especially 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 fhould be added the lines which are found underneath it on his monument: "Stay, paffenger, why doft thou go so faft? "Read, if thou canft, whom envious death hath plac'd 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 strong a resemblance between the bust at Stratford, and the portrait of our author 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 pertness in the countenance of the latter totally differing from that placid Compofure and thoughtful gravity, so perceptible in his original Portrait and his best 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 1kill to copy it. Mr. Granger obferves, (Biog. 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 caused a portrait to be drawn for him from a person who nearly resembled him." This entertaining writer was a great collector of anecdotes, but not always very fcrupulous in inquiring into the authenticity of the information which he procured; for this improbable tale, I find, on examination, ftands only on the infertion of an anonymous writer in The Gentleman's Magazine, for Auguft, 1759, who boldly "affirmed it as an absolute fa&;" but being afterwards publickly called upon to produce his authority, never produced any. There is the strongest reason therefore to presume 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 artift Mr. Ozias Humphry; and from that drawing the print prefixed to the prefent 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 chriftian 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 author; for in the Picture-Gallery at Oxford are two portraits of Taylor the WaterPoet, and on each of them" John Taylor pinx. 1655." There appears fome resemblance 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 leaft air of Cornelius Janfen's performances. That this picture was once in the poffeffion of Sir Wm. D'Ave |