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HISTORY OF PRINTING.
classics. The El zeviis, in particular, bare suffered more by counterfeits than, perhaps, any other; for, as their books were not at first so plentifully circulated, as to satisfy the numerous purchas- ers, there were not wanting persons willing to purchase such surreptitious works; especially, when they were to be obtained below the com- mon price.
1616, April 23. Died, William Shak- SPEARE, or Shakspere, (for the floating or- thography of the name is properly attached to the one or the other of these varieties) the pride and glory of the English nation, and whose fame is now the admiration of the civilized world: —
A creature such As, to seek thraagh the regions of the earth For one his like, there would be something failing In him that should compare. — Cj/mbelmt.
Biographical curiosity is a just and generous tribute to the memory of those mortals whom heaven has been pleased to endow with a larger portion of its own etherial energy. If the favoured individual was conversant with courts; if he directed the movement of armies or of states; or if the powers of his mind were de- voted to the silent pursuits of literature — to the converse of philosophy and the muse, dark must that age be that could withhold from him its admiration. It becomes then a subject of the deepest interest to inquire into the history of that man, the expansion of whose intellectual greatness has filled the eyes of the world; the bright track of whose genius indelibly remains, but the solitary trace of whose mortal footstens is now obliterated for ever. Homer is now only a solitary name, of whom we actually know nothing; and we see only an arm of immense power thrust forth from a mass of impenetrable darkness, and holding up the hero of his song to the applatises of never-dying fame.
Little more than two centuries have elapsed since William Shakspeare conversed with our tongue, and trod the self-same soil with our- selves; and if it were not for the records kept by our church in its registers of births, marriages, and burials, we should at this moment be as personally ignorant of the " sweet swan of Avon" as we are of the old minstrel and rhapsodist Meles. That William Shakspeare was born in Stratford upon Avon; that he married and had three children; that he wrote a certain number of dramas; that he died before he had attained to old age, and was buried in his native town, are positively the only facts, in the personal history of this extraordinary man, of which we are certainly possessed; and, if we should be solicitous to fin up this bare and most unsatis- factory outline, we must have recourse to the vague reports of unsubstantial tradition, or to the still more shadowy inferences of lawless and vagabondcoujecturc. Of this remarkable ignor- ance of one of the most richly endowed with in- tellect of the human species, who ran his mortal race in our own country, and who stands separated from us by no very great intervention of time.
the causes may not be difficult to be ascertained. The history of William Shakspeare is a perfect blank till the occurrence of an event which drove him from his native town, and gave his wondCT- ful intellect to break out in its full lustre on the world. That he became an actor and a writer of plays; in neither of which characters, how ever, he might excel in them, could he be lifted hi^ in the estimation of his contemporaries. He waa honoured, indeed, with the friendship of nobles, and the patronage of monarchs : his theatre was frequented by the wits of the metropolis; and he associated with the most intellectual of his times. But the spirit of the age was against him; and, in opposition to it, he could not be- come the subject of any general or comprehensive interest. The nation, in short, knew little, and cared less, about him. During his life, and for some years after his death, inferior dramatisu outran him in the race of popularity; and then the flood of puritan fanaticism swept him and the stage together into temporary oblivion.
It would be especially gratifying to us to ex- hibit to our readers some portion at least of the personal history of this illustrious man during his long residence in the capital; — to announce the names and characters of his associates, a few of which only we can obtain from Fuller; to delineate his habits of life; to record his con- vivial wit, to commemorate the books which he read; and to number his compositions as they dropped in succession from his pen. But no power of this nature is indulged to us. All that active and efficient portion of his mortal exist- ence, which constituted considerably more than a third part of it, is an unknown renon, not to be penetrated by our most zealous and intelligent researchers.
He was born on the 23rd of April, 1564, in Henley-street, Stratford. His father was a con- siderable dealer in wool, and had filled the highest magisterial office of his native town;* but having a large family, and his trade declin- ing, he could give him but a scanty education. In id82, before he had completed his eighteenth year, he married Ann Hathaway, the daughter, as Rowe informs us, of a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. The bride was eight years older than the bridegroom. She remained in Stratford during the long abode of her husband in the metropolis, and at his death she is found only slightly mentioned in his will; little more is known respecting her than that, surviving her husband rather more than seven years, she was buried on the 8th day of August, 1623. By the Stratford register we can ascertain that his only son, Hamnet, was buried in the twelfth year of his age, on the 11th of August, 1696; and that, after an interval of
- A grant or conflnnation of * arms' to John Shakspeare,
the dnunatist's father, 1696, viz. gold, on a bend sable, and a spear of the first, the point steeled, proper; and his crest, or cognizance, a falcon, his wings displayed, argent standing on a wreath of his collars supporting a spear gold steel as aforesaid, set upon a helmet with mantds aod tassels.
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