quences to argue from the dramatist's technical accuracy in the use of legal phrases, that he was a clerk in the office of a country attorney; and Malone is more than usually reprehensible in endeavouring to support so bold a conjecture, by the suggestion that the schoolmaster story of Aubrey is a mere adumbration of the truth. Aubrey's evidence is positive, "he understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a school-master in the country;" and is entitled to as much credit as any other tradition he has preserved, neither involving in itself improbability, nor standing in opposition to any recorded fact.

NOTE F.

SHAKSPEARE'S wife was not of " Shottery," as has been affirmed by the author of the " Picturesque Tour to the Banks of the Avon," and his blundering followers. What then becomes of the cottage at Shottery, where the wife of the poet and her parents dwelt, and in which their descendants, who are poor and numerous, still continue to reside? Here the credulous have been gratified by the display of undoubted relics of the poet. Very particular mention is made of a bed, which an old woman of seventy had slept in from her childhood, and had always been told it had been there since the house was built. Her absolute refusal to part with this treasure, is adduced as a proof that the purchasers of the Shakspearian relics had not listened with a too easy credulity to whatever they had been told. At the time

of the Jubilee, George, the brother of David Garrick, purchased an ink-stand, and a pair of fringed gloves, said to have been worn by Shakspeare; but David's enthusiasm for Shakspeare was tempered by judgment, and he purchased nothing.

NOTE G.

MALONE has laboured to refute the whole of this account. His arguments may be reduced to two: 1st, the Sir Thomas Lucy alleged to have been Shakespeare's prosecutor, never had a park, it being universally acknowledged that there was none at Charlecote, and Fulbroke was not purchased by the family till the reign of James I.: no theft of deer, therefore, could have been made from Sir Thomas Lucy, it not being possible to produce an example of the keeping of deer in grounds not recognised as parks, in the legal meaning of that word; 2dly, such. grounds only were protected by the common law, and by the fifth of Elizabeth, cap. 21.

Without the latter part of the first objection be as incontrovertibly true as the former, the argument avails nothing; for it is alleged that Shakspeare stole deer from Sir Thomas Lucy, not that he stole it either from Charlecote or Fulbroke. That no deer were ever kept in private grounds, because the practice was not so universal as to have forced itself into notice, is what cannot, in contradiction to probability, be conceded. Gentlemen of the 16th century would derive as much pleasure

from the preservation of a few head of deer in grounds contiguous to their dwellings, as we know they do in the present day. The passage quoted from Blackstone might have engendered a suspicion, even in the mind. of Malone, that the practice was no novelty many years ago. "It is not every field or common which a gentleman chooses to surround with a wall or paling, and stock with a herd of deer, that is thereby constituted a legal park." As it is admitted that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, in its legal sense, we will just review our authorities for believing, that he at least had deer, and, if that be proved, I care not where he kept them. The first evidence, in point of date, is that furnished by Malone himself, who quotes some notes made by Archdeacon Davies, to the manuscript notices of Mr. William Fulman, on the most eminent English poets. Davies died in 1707, and the papers of himself and Fulman are preserved in Corpus College, Oxon. Davies relates, that Shakspeare stole venison and rabbits from the knight. (Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 121-3.) Rowe's ac

count has been given in the text. We next come to Jones of Tarbick, whose facts are nearly the same as Rowe's, with the added particular, that the offensive ballad was fixed on Sir Thomas' park gate, and such confirmation of the whole story as the repetition of the first stanza of the ballad alleged to have been written afforded. The value of Jones' evidence has been already estimated; it is only necessary here to show, that the stanza repeated by Jones has descended in an uncorrupted state. Jones recited the lines to an acquaintance, who committed them to writing, and a

relative of Jones' acquaintance communicated them to Oldys from him the lines in the text are copied. Capel's account is this: Jones himself wrote down the stanza; this stanza was repeated from memory, by Capel's maternal grandfather, Mr. Thomas Wilkes, to Capel's father, who committed it to writing. The two copies of the stanza derived from the same source, but transmitted through different channels, agree precisely with each other. The story, thus authenticated, is surely conclusive as to Sir Thomas Lucy having had deer, and as to some of those deer having been purloined by ShakI have forborne to cite Chetwood, because his authority is suspicious; the stanzas he produces are not in the discovered song, with which, moreover, they are at variance in the mode of attack upon Sir Thomas Lucy, and the measure of verse in which they are constructed. It is not too much to believe of Chetwood, that presuming on the irrecoverable loss of all but the first stanza of the ballad, he forged what he thought an appropriate continuation of it. As to Malone's second objection, he partly answers it himself, admitting that Shakspeare might have been proceeded against by an action of trespass. He dismisses the supposition, however, of such having been the case, because it has never been alleged that any civil suit was instituted against Shakspeare on this ground. Rowe's account is much too loose and general to warrant a decision respecting the nature of the proceeding against Shakspeare, but he states positively enough, that the poet was prosecuted in consequence of his depredation on Sir Thomas Lucy's property; and, from all that appears, he

might as well have been prosecuted for the trespass as any thing else. But even allowing Malone to have succeeded in the interposition of a legal impossibility against the prosecution of the poet, does the whole story necessarily fall to the ground? Was prosecution the only evil to be apprehended from the anger of so powerful an enemy as Sir Thomas? certainly not; and this Malone well knew when he said, a few pages before, "if our author was so unfortunate as to offend him, he certainly could afterwards find no safe or comfortable abiding in his native town, where he could not escape the constant notice of his prosecutor." (Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 132.) The story then, on Malone's own statement, will stand well enough without the prosecution. And here let me ask, why the same licence of interpretation is not allowed to the words prosecuted and prosecution, in Rowe's narrative, as we are compelled to give to that of prosecutor in the sentence quoted from Malone? The word there can only be understood to mean persecutor, and no difficulty remains to contend with, if we read persecuted and persecution in Rowe's sentence.

The collateral proofs of the tradition are, that Sir Thomas Lucy was very active in the preservation of game, consequently an extremely likely man to act with severity against a depredator on his manor. It has always been believed that Sir Thomas Lucy was ridiculed under the portrait of Justice Shallow, who complains of Falstaff for beating his men, killing his deer, and breaking open his lodge. Sir Hugh Evans also plays upon the word luce in the same manner as the ballad does upon Lucy. Lucies are little fish, and the arms of the Lucy family "three lucies hariant."