company; and, amongst them, fome that made a fre-. quent practice of deer-ftealing engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Cherlecot, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that Gentleman, as he thought, fomewhat too feverely; and in order to revenge that ill ufage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first effay of his poetry, be loft, yet it is faid to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for fome time, and shelter himfelf in London.

It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is faid to have made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. He was received into the company then in being, at first, in a very mean rank; but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the ftage, foon diftinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. His name is printed, as the cuftom was in those times, amongst those of the other players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of what fort of parts he used to play; and, though I have enquired, I could never meet with further account of him this way, than that the top of his performance was the Ghoft in his own Hamlet. I should have been much more pleased, to have learned, from certain authority, which was the first play he wrote; it would be without doubt a pleasure to any man, curious in things of this

any

kind,

kind, to see and know what was the first effay of a fancy like Shakspeare's. Perhaps we are not to look for his beginnings, like thofe of other authors, among their leaft perfect writings; art had fo little, and nature had fo large a fhare in what he did, that, for aught I know, the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, and had the most fire and ftrength of imagination in them, were the best. I would not be thought by this to mean, that his fancy was fo loofe and extravagant, as to be independent on the rule and government of judgment; but that what he thought was commonly fo great, so justly and rightly conceived in itself, that it wanted little or no correction, and was immediately approved by an impartial judgment at the first fight. But though the order of time in which the feveral pieces were written be generally uncertain, yet there are paffages in fome few of them which feem to fix their dates. So the Chorus at the end of the fourth act of Henry the Fifth, by a compliment very hand fomely turned to the earl of Effex, fhews the play to have been written when that lord was general for the queen in Ireland: and his elegy upon queen Elizabeth, and her fucceffor king James, in the latter end of his Henry, the Eighth, is a proof of that play's being written after the acceffion of the latter of those two princes to the crown of England. Whatever the particular times of his writing were, the people of his age, who began to grow wonderfully fond of diverfions of this kind, could not but be highly pleased to fee

4

a genius arise from amongst them of so pleasurable, so rich a vein, and fo plentifully capable of furnishing their favourite entertainments. Besides the advantages of his wit, he was in himself a good-natured man, of great fweetness in his manners, and a moft agreeable companion; fo that it is no wonder, if, with fo many good qualities, he made himself acquainted with the best converfations of thofe times. Queen Elizabeth had several of his plays acted before her, and without doubt gave him many gracious marks of her favour: it is that maiden princess plainly, whom he intends by

-A fair veftal, throned by the west.

Midfummer Night's Dream.

And that whole paffage is a compliment very properly brought in, and very handfomely applied to her. She was fo well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff, in The Two Parts of Henry Fourth, that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to shew him in love. This is faid to be the occafion of his writing The Merry Wives of Windfor. How well fhe was obeyed, the play itself is an admirable proof. Upon this occafion it may not be improper to obferve, that this part of Falstaff is faid to have been written originally under the name of* Oldcastle; fome of that family being then remaining, the queen was pleased to command him to alter

*See the Epilogue to Henry the Fourth.

it;

me

it; upon which he made ufe of Falstaff. The prefent offence was indeed avoided; but I do not know whether the author may not have been fomewhat to blame in his fecond choice, fince it is certain that Sir John Falstaff, who was a knight of the garter, and a lieutenant-general, was a name of diftinguished merit in the wars in France in Henry the Fifth's and Henry the Sixth's times. What grace foever the queen conferred upon him, it was not to her only he owed the fortune which the reputation of his wit made. He had the honour to meet with many great and uncommon marks of favour and friendship from the earl of Southampton, famous in the hiftories of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate earl of Effex. It was to that noble lord that he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis. There is one inftance fo fingular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakspeare's, that, if I had not been affured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I fhould not have ventured to have inserted, that my lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to; a bounty very great, and very rare at any time, and almost equal to that profufe generofity the prefent age has fhewn to French dancers and Italian fingers.

What particular habitude or friendships he contracted with private men, I have not been able to learn, more than that every one, who had a true tafte of merit, and

could diftinguish men, had generally a juft value and efteem for him. His exceeding candour and good-nature must certainly have inclined all the gentler part of the world to love him, as the power of his wit obliged the men of the most delicate knowledge and polite learning to admire him.

His acquaintance with Ben Jonfon began with a rémarkable piece of humanity and good-nature. Mr. Jonfon, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and supercilionfly over, were juft upon returning it to him with an ill-natured anfwer, that it would be of no fervice to their company; when Shakspeare luckily caft his eye upon it, and found something fo well in it, as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonfon and his writings to the publick. Jonfon was certainly a very good fcholar, and in that had the advantage of Shakfpeare; though at the fame time, I believe, it must be allowed, that what nature gave the latter was more than a balance for what books had given the former; and the judgment of a great man upon this occafion was, I think, very juft and proper. In a converfation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William D'Avenant, Endymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eton, and Ben Jonfon; Sir John Suckling, who was a profeffed admirer of Shakspeare, had undertaken his defence against

Ben