Ten in the hundred lies here ingrav'd, This farcaftical piece of wit was, at the gentle man's own requeft, thrown out extemporally in his company. And this Mr. John Combe I take to be the fame, who, by Dugdale in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, is faid to have died in the year 1614, and for whom, at the upper end of the quire of the Guild of the Holy Cross at Stratford, a fair monument is erected, having a statue thereon cut in alabaster, and in a gown, with this epitaph. "Here lieth interred "the body of John Combe, efq; who died the 10th "of July, 1614, who bequeathed several annual "charities to the parish of Stratford, and 100l. to "be lent to fifteen poor tradefmen from three years "to three years, changing the parties every third "year, at the rate of fifty thillings per annum, the increase to be diftributed to the almes-poor there." The donation has all the air of a rich and faga cious ufurer. Shakespeare himfelf did not furvive Mr. Combe long, for he died in the year 1616, the 53d of his age. He lies buried on the north fide of the chancel in the great church at Stratford; where a monument, decent enough for the time, is erected to him, and placed against the wall. He is reprefented under an arch in a fitting pofture, a cufhion fpread before him, with a pen in his right hand, and his left refted on a fcrowl of paper. The Latin diftich, which is placed. under the cushion, has been given us by Mr. Pope, or his graver, in this manner. INGENIO Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Ma ronem, Terra tegit, populus meret, Olympus habet. I confefs, I do not conceive the difference betwixt ingenio and genia the first verse. They feem to me intirely fynonymous terms; nor was the Pylian fage Neftor celebrated for his ingenuity, but for an experience and judgment owing to his long age. Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, has copied this diftich with a diftinction which Mr. Rowe has followed, and which certainly restores us the true meaning of the epitaph. JUDICIO Pylium, genio Socratem, &c. In 1614, the greater part of the town of Stratford was confumed by fire; but our Shakespeare's house, among fome others, escaped the flames. This house was first built by Sir Hugh Clopton, a younger brother of an ancient family in that neighbourhood, who took their name from the manor of Clopton. Sir Hugh was sheriff of London in the reign of Richard III. and lord-mayor in the reign of king Henry VII. To this gentleman the town of Stratford is indebted for the fine stone-bridge, confifting of fourteen arches, which, at an extraordinary expence, he built over the Avon, together with a causeway running at the westend thereof; as alfo for rebuilding the chapel adjoining to his house, and the cross-ifle in the church there. It is remarkable of him, that, though he lived and died a batchelor, among the other extenfive charities which he left both to the city of London and town of Stratford, he bequeathed confiderable legacies for the marriage of poor maidens of good name and fame both in London and at Stratford. Notwithstanding which large donations in his life, and bequefts at his death, as he had purchased the manor of Clopton, and all the eftate of the family, fo he left the fame again to his elder brother's fon with a very great addition (a proof how well beneficence and oeconomy may walk hand in hand in wife fa milies): milies): good part of which estate is yet in the poffeffion of Edward Clopton, efq; and Sir Hugh Clopton, knt. lineally defcended from the elder brother of the firft Sir Hugh: who particularly bequeathed to his nephew, by his will, his house, by the name of his Great Houfe in Stratford. The eftate had now been fold out of the Clopton family for above a century, at the time when Shakespeare became the purchafer: who, having repaired and modelled it to his own mind, changed the name to New-place; which the manfion-house, fince erected upon the fame spot, at this day retains. The house and lands, which attended it, continued in ShakeIpeare's defcendants to the time of the Restoration: when they were repurchased by the Clopton family, and the mansion now belongs to Sir Hugh Clopton, knt. To the favour of this worthy gentleman I owe the knowledge of one particular, in honour of our poet's once dwelling-house, of which, I prefume, Mr. Rowe never was apprized. When the civil war raged in England, and king Charles the Firft's queen was driven by the neceffity of affairs to make a recess in Warwickshire, fhe kept her court for three weeks in New-place. We may reasonably fuppofe it then the beft private house in the town; and her majefty preferred it to the college, which was in the poffeffion of the Combe family, who did not so strongly favour the king's party. How much our author employed himself in poetry, after his retirement from the ftage, does not fo evi. dently appear: very few pofthumous sketches of his pen have been recovered to afcertain that point. We have been told, indeed, in print, but not till very lately, that two large chefts full of this great man's loose papers and manufcripts, in the hands of an ignorant baker of Warwick (who married one of the defcendants from our Shakespeare) were carelefly fcattered and thrown about as garret-lumber and litter, to to the particular knowledge of the late Sir William Bishop, till they were all confumed in the general fire and deftruction of that town. I cannot help being a little apt to diftruft the authority of this tradition; because his wife furvived him seven years, and as his favourite daughter Sufanna furvived her twenty-fix years, it is very improbable they fhould fuffer fuch a treasure to be removed, and tranflated into a remoter branch of the family, without a fcrutiny first made into the value of it. This, I fay, inclines me to diftruft the authority of the relation: but, notwithstanding fuch an apparent improbability, if we really loft fuch a treasure, by whatever fatality or caprice of fortune they came into fuch ignorant and neglectful hands, I agree with the relater, the misfortune is wholly irreparable. To thefe particulars, which regard his perfon and private life, fome few more are to be gleaned from Mr. Rowe's Account of his Life and Writings: let us now take a fhort view of him in his publick capacity as a writer: and, from thence, the tranfition will be eafy to the state in which his writings have been handed down to us. No age, perhaps, can produce an author more various from himfelf, than Shakespeare has been univerfally acknowledged to be. The diverfity in ftile, and other parts of compofition, fo obvious in him, is as varioufly to be accounted for. His education, we find, was at beft but begun: and he ftarted early into a fcience from the force of genius, unequally affifted by acquired improvements. His fire, fpirit, and exuberance of imagination gave an impetuofity to his pen his ideas flowed from him in a stream rapid, but not turbulent; copious, but not ever overbearing its fhores. The eafe and sweetness of his temper might not a little contribute to his facility in writing as his employment, as a player, gave him an advantage and habit of fancying himself the very character Character he meant to delineate. He ufed the helps of his function in forming himself to create and exprefs that fublime, which other actors can only copy, and throw out, in action and graceful attitude. But, Nullum fine venia placuit ingenium, fays Seneca. The genius, that gives us the greatest pleasure, fometimes ftands in need of our indulgence. Whenever this happens with regard to Shakespeare, I would willingly impute it to a vice of his times. We fee complaifance enough, in our days, paid to a bad taste. So that his clinches, falfe wit, and defcending beneath himfelf, may have proceeded from a deference paid to the then reigning barbarifm. I have not thought it out of my province, whenever occafion offered, to take notice of fome of our poet's grand touches of nature: fome, that do not appear fuperficially fuch; but in which he feems the most deeply inftructed; and to which, no doubt, he has fo much owed that happy prefervation of his characters, for which he is juftly celebrated. Great genius's, like his, naturally unambitious, are fatisfied to conceal their art in these points. It is the foible of your worfer poets to make a parade and oftentation of that little fcience they have; and to throw it out in the moft ambitious colours. And whenever a writer of this class shall attempt to copy these artful concealments of our author, and fhall either think them eafy, or practised by a writer for his eafe, he will foon be convinced of his mistake by the difficulty of reaching the imitation of them. Speret idem, fudet multùm, frustâque laboret, Indeed, to point out and exclaim upon all the beauties of Shakespeare, as they come fingly in review, would be as infipid, as endless; as tedious, as unneceffary: but the explanation of thofe beauties VOL. I. [H] that |