should seem, that his name and reputation should for ever be united with that of England, and should, to all future time, shed a lustre on the country that had the good fortune to give him birth.

That he was snatched from the world at a time when his faculties were in their full vigour, and before he was "declined into the vale of years," must ever be a subject of deep, but unavailing regret, to the liberal part of mankind. Let us, however, be thankful that this "sweetest child of fancy" did not perish while he yet lay in the cradle. When he was but nine weeks old, the plague, which in that and the preceding year was so fatal to England, broke out at Stratford upon Avon, and raged with such violence, between the 30th of June and the last day of December, that two hundred and thirty-eight persons, in that period, were carried to the grave, of which number, probably, two hundred and sixteen died of that malignant distemper3; and only one of the whole number resided not in Stratford, but in the neighbouring hamlet of Welcombe. The total

2 In the year 1563, between the 1st of August and the last day of December, 20,136 persons died of the plague in London. It broke out again with great violence in August, 1564.

3 From the two hundred and thirty-seven inhabitants of Stratford, who, it appears from the register, were buried in this period, twenty-one are to be subducted, who, it may be presumed, would have died in six months in the ordinary course of nature; for it the five preceding years, reckoning according to the style of tha time, from March 25, 1559, to March 25, 1564, two hundred and twenty-one persons were buried at Stratford, of whom two hun dren and ten were townsmen: that is, forty-two died each year, at an average.

number of the inhabitants of Stratford, at that time appears to have been about 1470*, and consequently

4 Such appears to have been the number of inhabitants at that time, calculating one in thirty-five to have died annually. I suppose one in thirty-five to have then died in a year on account of the superior mortality in former times from the small-pox, and the ill treatment of other disorders: one in forty would at present be a more just calculation. In the parish of Bookham, in the county of Surrey, in the neighbourhood of which I passed the summer of the year 1788, the inhabitants were numbered, and found to be five hundred. In the preceding year there died there, only eleven persons, that is, one in forty-six. In a country parish in Hampshire, the annual proportion of deaths for ninety years previous to 1774, was found to be one in fifty. See Howlet's Essay on the Population of England and Wales, p. 11.

The baptisms and burials at Stratford during the five years mentioned in the preceding note, compared with the baptisms and burials during five years from 1783 to 1788, confirm the calculation that has been made.

The baptisms from March 25, 1559, to March 25, 1564, were two hundred and seventy-six; i. e. fifty-five per ann. at an average The baptisms from Jan. 1, 1783, to Dec. 31, 1787, were four hundred and seventy-four: i. e. ninety-five per ann. at an average: but of Stratfordians probably only eighty-five.

The burials in five years from March 25, 1559, to March 25, 1564, were, of Stradfordians, two hundred and ten, i. e. forty-two per ann.; which, multiplied by thirty-five, gives 1470, the number of inhabitants stated in the text. If we multiply the average: number of the annual baptisms during the same period (i. e. fiftyfive) by twenty-six, the number of inhabitants will be found to have

been 1430.

The burials in five years from Jan. 1, 1783, to Dec. 31, 1787, were four hundred and nine; i. e. per ann. eighty-two; but of Stratfordians only seventy; which number, multiplied by forty, makes the inhabitants of Stratford on Dec. 31, 1787, 2800, nearly double the number in our author's time. In April 1765, they were numbered, and were then found to be 2287.

In 1730, the houses in Stratford (including the old town) were

the plague, in the last six months of the year 1564, carried off more than a seventh part of them. Fortunately for mankind, it did not reach the house where the infant Shakspeare lay: for not one of that name appears in the dead list. A poetical enthusiast will find no difficulty in believing that, like Horace, he reposed secure and fearless in the midst of contagion and death, protected by the Muses to whom his future life was to be devoted:

sacrâ

Lauroque, collatâque myrto,

Non sine diis animosus infans 5.

If I were to acquiesce in the tradition communicated to Mr. Rowe, in the beginning of the last century, I should now, in due order, and in imitation of all the biographers who have implicitly followed him on the same subject, inform my readers, that our poet's father, John Shakspeare, "was a considerable

four hundred and fifty-seven. If we reckon five to each house, the inhabitants were then 2285. By the returns made to Parliament in 1811, it appears that the inhabitants in Stratford amounted to 2842, whereof 1340 were males, and 1502 were females, and that the inhabited houses were 548, and the uninhabited 13.

5 Hor. lib. iii. ode iv.

6 Jacob's Lives of the Poets, 8vo. 1720. Pope's Edition of Shakspeare's Plays, 4to. 1725. Theobald's Edition, 8vo, 1733. General Dictionary, folio, 1739. Hanmer's Edition of Shakspeare's Plays, 4to. 1744. Warburton's Edition, 8vo. 1747. IIlustrious Heads, 1748. Cibber's Lives of the Poets, 12mo. 1753. Biographia Britannica, folio, 1747. Biographical Dictionary, 8vo. 1760. Biographia Dramatica, 1780, &c. &c.

dealer in wool, and had so large a family, ten children in all, that though he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, it is true (continues Mr. Rowe), for some time, at a free school, where it is probable he acquired what Latin' he was master of; but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forced him to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language ".

It is somewhat remarkable, that in Rowe's Life of our author, there are not more than eleven facts mentioned; and of these, on a critical examination,

7 So Rowe's second edition. In the first, "that little Latin he was master of."

• Rowe's Life of Shakspeare.

9 These facts are:

1. That he was the son of John Shakspeare, and born at Stratford, in April, 1564.

2. That he died there in 1616.-These are both true, and were furnished by the parish register.

3. That his father had ten children.

4. That his father was a woolman.

5. That when the poet came to London "he was received into the company of actors then in being," as if there was then but one company.

6. That he was but an indifferent actor.

7. That Falstaff was originally called Oldcastle, and that the poet was obliged to change the name of that character.

8. That Lord Southampton gave him 1000l. to complete a pur

chase.

9. That he left three daughters.

10. That he was driven to take shelter in London in consequence of stealing deer from Sir Thomas Lucy's park.

The preceding eight facts will all be shown to be false.

eight will be found to be false. Of one (of very little importance) great doubt may be justly entertained; and the two remaining facts, which are unquestionably true (our poet's baptism and burial), were furnished by the register of the parish of Stratford.

We have already seen that one part of the foregoing account is not true. John Shakspeare, it has been proved, never had but eight children; and only five of them lived to be any burthen to their father, with respect to their education'. This circumstance, were we reduced to the necessity of conjecture, might suggest some doubts concerning such other parts of this relation as are not supported by better evidence, particularly that which concerns the occupation of his father. But on the subject of the trade of John Shakspeare, I am not under the necessity of relying on conjecture; being enabled, after a very tedious and troublesome search, to shut up this long agitated question for ever. In a manuscript account of our author, written above a century ago, by Mr. Aubrey, an ingenious man, and a most careful, laborious, and zealous collector of anecdotes relative to our English poets and other celebrated writers of his native country, our author's father is said to have been a butcher. Mr. Rowe, we have just now seen, about thirty years afterwards, was informed, from oral tradition,

11. That he introduced Ben Jonson to the stage, may certainly be considered as extremely doubtful. This tale probably took its rise from Shakspeare's having assisted Jonson in writing Sejanus. In the printed play, however, the author omitted whatever our poet had contributed to that piece.

See p. 51.