in Rymer's Fœdera). Again, it is certain, that Shakespeare did not exhibit his Macbeth, till after the union was brought about, and till after K. James I. had begun to touch for the evil: for it is plain, he has inserted compliments, on both those accounts, upon his royal master in that tragedy. Nor, indeed, could the number of the dramatick pieces, he produced, admit of his retiring near so early as that period. So that what Spenser there says, if it relate at all to Shakespeare, must hint at some occasional recess he made for a time upon a disgust taken: or the Willy, there mentioned, must relate to some other favourite poet. I believe, we may safely determine, that he had not quitted in the year 1610. For in his Tempest, our author makes mention of the Bermuda islands, which were unknown to the English, till, in 1609, Sir John Summers made a voyage to North-America, and discovered them: and afterwards invited some of his countrymen to settle a plantation there. That he became the private gentleman, at least three years before his decease, is pretty obvious from another circumstance: I mean, from that remarkable and well-known story, which Mr. Rowe has given us of our author’s intimacy with Mr. John Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury; and upon whom Shakespeare made the following facetious epitaph.
’Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav’d;
If any man ask, who lies in this tomb,
Oh! oh! quoth the devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.
This farcastical piece of wit was, at the gentleman’s own request, thrown out extemporally in his company. And this Mr. John Combe I take to be the same, who, by Dugdale in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, is said 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, esq; 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 tradesmen from three years to three years, changing the parties every third year, at the rate of fifty shillings per annum, the in-
