written by Shakspeare, against Sir Thomas Lucy, was stuck upon his park gate; which exasperating the knight, he applied to a lawyer, at Warwick, to proceed against him 5." Mr. Jones, it is added, recollected the first stanza of this ballad, which was all that he could remember of it; and to Mr. Wilkes, grandson of the gentleman to whom he repeated it, we are indebted for this fragment; which was given to the publick, in 1778, by Mr. Steevens, from the manuscript collection of the late Mr. Oldys, to whom 5 It was not known that there were not less than five or six attorneys at Stratford, at this time. Hence it is that a Warwick lawyer was introduced on this occasion. According to this improbable account, our author commits an offence against a gentleman, who takes no notice of him; and then he writes a lampoon on the person whom he has injured, who becomes so exasperated that he determines to prosecute the offender. These relaters seem to suppose that our poet acted on the principle of his own Richard: "I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl." 6 I have endeavoured to exhibit what Mr. Capel has left on this subject, in intelligible language; but am not sure that I understand him rightly. As a specimen of his style, I will add his own words, which the reader will interpret as he can : "The writer of his Life,' (the first modern) speaks of a 'lost ballad,' which added fuel, he says, to the knight's before conceived anger,' and redoubled the prosecution,' and calls the ballad the first essay of Shakspeare's poetry:' one stanza of it which has the appearance of genuine was put into the editor's hands many years ago by an ingenious gentleman (grandson of its preserver) with this account of the way in which it descended to him. Mr. Thomas Jones who dwelt at Turbich a village in Worcestershire a few miles from Stratford upon Avon, and died in the year 1703, aged upwards of ninety, remembered to have heard from several old people at Stratford the story of Shakspeare's robbing Sir Thomas Lucy's park, and their account of it also this anecdote was communicated, by a relation of Mr. Jones. I have since been furnished with the entire song, which was found in a chest of drawers, agreed with Mr. Rowe's, with this addition,-that the ballad written against Sir Thomas by Shakspeare was stuck upon his park-gate, which exasperated the knight to apply to a lawyer at Warwick to proceed against him. Mr. Jones had put down in writing the first stanza of this ballad, which was all he remembered of it, and Mr. Thomas Wilkes (my grandfather) transmitted it to my father by memory, who also took it down in writing, and his copy is this [Mr. Capel then gives the first stanza]. An exact transcript, bating the O [Sing o lowsie Lucy]:" to which is added a note, telling us that "the people of those parts pronounce Lowsie like Lucy." "Mr. Jones of whom we had it [this stanza] originally was also the hander-down of that anecdote which has been given you in a note upon As You Like It [in Mr. Capel's commentaries on Shakspeare, in quarto], and of this anecdote Mr. Wilkes quotes another confirmation in the person of Mr. Oldys, a late stage antiquarian.” [Query. Of which of these anecdotes does this writer mean to name Mr. Oldys as the voucher? I suppose of that in As You Like It; though the word this, which he has used, should seem to relate to that which we are now considering.] As I have not the smallest doubt that the whole of this ballad is a modern invention, it is hardly worth while to examine the evidence concerning this first stanza: nor, indeed, is it very easy to comprehend Mr. Capel's account. He first tells us, that this stanza was put into his hands, many years ago, by an ingenious gentleman, grandson of its preserver. I suppose, "by the ingenious gentleman," he means Mr. Thomas Wilkes, whom he afterwards calls his grandfather. He then tells us, that though Mr. Jones had put it down in writing, and, we are to presume, gave it in writing to Mr. Wilkes, that gentleman transmitted it to his [Mr. Capel's] father by memory; and from his father's written copy, thus founded on a memorial copy, he gives it to his readers, though he has previously told them that, many years ago, a written copy was put into his hands by the grandson of the preserver that formerly belonged to Mrs. Dorothy Tyler', of Shottery, near Stratford, who died in 1778, at the age of eighty, and which I shall insert in the Appendix; being fully persuaded that one part of this ballad is just as genuine as the other; that is, that the whole is a forgery. The greater part of it is evidently of this rarity, which, being one step nearer the original, should seem to carry with it more authority. I may add, that the other anecdote, which is said to be also derived from Mr. Jones [that one of Shakspeare's brothers lived till after the Restoration, and recollected having seen our poet play the part of Adam, in As You Like It], is utterly impossible to be true, as I shall show in its proper place. So much for Mr. Capel's account of these verses. Mr. Oldys thus introduces the stanza of this ballad preserved by him, which corresponds exactly with Mr. Capel's copy: "There was a very aged gentleman living in the neighbourhood of Stratford (where he died fifty years since), who had not only heard from several old people in that town of Shakspeare's transgression, but could remember the first stanza of that bitter ballad, which, repeating to one of his acquaintance, he preserved it in writing, and here it is, neither better nor worse, but faith-' fully transcribed from the copy, which his relation very courteously communicated to me: "A parliemente member, a justice of peace, "At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse, "Yet an asse in his state "We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate. "If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it, Sing lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it." 7 She was sister to Samuel Tyler, Esquire, who purchased an estate, at Shottery, from the heir of Mr. Richard Quiney of London, and died at Shottery, in June, 1763, aged seventy. formed on various passages in the first scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor, which certainly afford ground for believing that our author, on some account or other, had not the most profound respect for Sir Thomas Lucy. The dozen white luces, however, which Shallow is made to commend as "a good coat,' was not Sir Thomas Lucy's coat of arms; though Mr. Theobald asserts that it is found on the monument of one of the family, as represented by Dugdale. No such coat certainly is found, either in Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, or in the church of Charlecote, where I, in vain, sought for it. It is probable that the deviation from the real coat of the Lucies, which was gules, three lucies hariant, argent, was 8 It is remarkable, that the seal used by Sir Thomas Lucy, was not that which is placed over his tomb, and which all the heralds have ascribed to his family, gules, three Lucies hariant argent," but three of the same little fishes braced or entwined; similar, in this respect, to a coat assigned to another ancient family. See Ferne's Blazon of Gentrie, 4to. 1584, p. 232. "This [the shield in the margin] you will confess to agree with the name; and yet it is honourable as may be. It is the coat of Geffrey Lord Lucy. He did bear gules, three lucies hariant, argent." In a subsequent page, the same author adds, "In like manner, Troutbeck hath taken up three trouts, whose coat, for the order of bearing the charge, I will set before your face, in this scutcheon. This shield is azure, three trouts braced in triangles argent, borne by the name of Troutbeck." A similar conceit may be observed in the arms of the Arundel family, which are sable, six swallows argent. In like manner, the family of Roche, who were Viscounts Fermoy, in Ireland, bore three roches in their arms. The quibble in the first scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor, without question, was intended to allude to the arms of Sir intentionally made by our poet, that the application might not be too direct, and give offence to Sir Thomas Lucy's son, who, when this play was written, was living, and much respected, at Stratford. Other attempts have been made to recover this much sought-for ballad; and, if we are to believe the author of a Manuscript History of the Stage, full of forgeries and falsehoods of various kinds', which I Thomas Lucy, and the pronunciation of the time aided the allusion. Lowsy, I have no doubt, was pronounced, as it is yet in Scotland, Loozy; and the name of Lucy, as pronounced in Warwickshire [Loosy], had a very similar sound. In allusion to this coat of arms, and to his surname, Dr. William Lucy (grandson to Shakspeare's Sir Thomas Lucy), who finally became Bishop of St. David's, published in 1657, "Observations, &c. on Hobbes's Leviathan," under the disguised name of Christopher Pike; on which Waller very gravely observes, that "no Englishman, who had not dabbled into Latin, would have changed so good a name as Lucy into that of a fish." But we see, the Bishop did not need to have recourse to the Latin, lucius; the language of heraldry, at least, furnished him the same word anglicised. 9 Sir Thomas Lucy, the elder, the supposed prosecutor of Shakspeare, died at Charlecote, in the year 1600, as appears from the following entry in the register of that parish: "Sir Thomas Lucy, Knight, departed this life the 6th day of July, 1600, and was buried the 16th of the same month." He was, therefore, at his death, in the sixty-ninth year of his age [see the note quoted in p. 123]. In the inquisition taken upon his death, at Warwick, September 26, 43 Eliz. 1601, he is said to have died on the 7th of July; and so says his funeral certificate, authenticated by his son. The same inquisition states that his son, Sir Thomas, was, at the time of taking it, fortythree years old, and upwards. Esc. 43 Eliz. p. 6. n. 7. William Chetwood, formerly prompter of Drury Lane theatre, the unblushing fabricator of numerous unseen and non-existing |