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that was selected was a new one in the family of the There was also current in the same town a favO orite anecdote, in which a person was warned not to the speak of his godfather lest he should incur the risk of breaking the Third Commandment. This was a kind of representative story, one which could be told of any individual at the pleasure of the narrator, and it is found in the generic form in a collection of tavern pleasantries Da made by Taylor, the Water-Poet, in 1629. This last fact alone is sufficient to invest a personal application with the gravest doubt, and to lead to the inference that the subsequent version related of Shakespeare was altogether unauthorized. If so, there can be little doubt that with the spurious tale originated its necessary foundation, d -the oft-repeated intimation that Sir William Davenant was the natural son of the great dramatist. The latter surmise is first heard of in one of the manuscripts of Aubrey, written in or before the year 1680, in which he says, after mentioning the Crown tavern,-“Mr. William Shakespeare was wont to goe into Warwickshire once a yeare, and did commonly in his journey lye at this house in Oxen, where he was exceedingly respected." He then proceeds to tell us that Sir William, considering himself equal in genius to Shakespeare, was not averse to being taken for his son, and would occasionally make these confessions in his drinking bouts with Sam Butler and other friends. The writer's language is obscure, and might have been thought to mean simply that Davenant wished to appear in the light of a son in the poetical acceptation of the term, but the reckless gossip must needs add that Sir William's mother not only "had a very light report," but was looked upon in her own day

as a perfect Thais. Sufficient is known of the family history of the Davenants, and of their social position and respectability, to enable us to be certain that this t onslaught upon the lady's reputation is a scandalous mis-statement. Anthony Wood also, the conscientious Oxonian biographer, who had the free use of Aubrey's papers, eliminates every kind of insinuation against the character of either Shakespeare or Mrs. Davenant. He may have known from reliable sources that there could have been no truth in the alleged illegitimacy, and any-1 how he no doubt had the independent sagacity to observe i that the reception of the libel involved extravagant admissions. It would require us to believe that the guilty parties, with incredible callousness, united at the font to perpetuate their own recollection of the crime; and this in the presence of the injured husband, who must be presumed to have been then, and throughout his life, unconscious of a secret which was so insecurely kept that it furnished ample materials for future slander. Even Aubrey himself tacitly concedes that the scandal had not transpired in the poet's time, for he mentions the great respect in which the latter was held at Oxford. Then, as if to make assurance to posterity doubly sure, there is preserved at Alnwick Castle a very elaborate manuscript poem on the Oxford gossip of the time of James I, including especially everything that could be raked up against its innkeepers and taverns, and in that manuscript there is no mention either of the Crown Inn or of the Davenants.

It is, indeed, easy to perceive that we should never have heard any scandal respecting Mrs. Davenant, if she had not been noted in her own time, and for long after

wards, for her exceptional personal attractions. Her to history ought to be a consolation to ugly girls, that is to th say, if the existence of such rarities as the latter be not altogether mythical. Listen to the antique words of Flecknoe, 1654, referring to Lord Exeter's observation that the world spoke kindly of none but people of the he ordinary types. "There is no great danger," he writes, even of the latter escaping censure, "calumny being so universal a trade now, as every one is of it; nor is there any action so good they cannot find a bad name for, nor entail upon 't an ill intention; insomuch as one was so injurious to his mistress's beauty not long since to say,— she has more beauty than becomes the chaste."

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A considerable portion of this year, 1606, was spent by the King's company in provincial travel. They were at Oxford in July, at Leicester in August, at Dover in September, and, at some unrecorded periods, at Maidstone, Saffron Walden, and Marlborough. Before the winter had set in they had returned to London, and in the Christmas holidays, on the evening of December 26, the tragedy of King Lear, some of the incidents of which were adopted from one or more older dramas on the same legend, was represented before King James at Whitehall, having no doubt been produced at the Globe in the summer of that year. No record of the character of its reception by the Court has been preserved, but it must have been successful at the theater for the booksellers, late in the November of the following year, made an arrangement with the company to enable them to obtain the sanction of the Master at the Revels for the publication of the tragedy, two editions of which shortly afterwards appeared, both dated in 1608. In these issues the author's

name is curiously given in one line of large type at the very commencement of each title-page, a singular and even unique testimony to the popularity of a dramatic author of the period.

The poet's eldest daughter, Susanna, then in her twenty-fifth year, was married at Stratford-on-Avon on June 5, 1607, to John Hall, M.A., a physician who afterwards rose to great provincial eminence. He was born in the year 1575, and was most probably connected with the Halls of Acton, co. Middlesex, but he was not a native of that village. In his early days, as was usual with the more highly educated youths of the time, he had traveled on the continent, and attained a proficiency in the French language. The period of his arrival at Stratford-on-Avon is unknown, but, from the absence of all notice of him in the local records previously to his marriage, it may be presumed that his settlement there had not then been of long duration. It might even have been the result of his engagement with the poet's daughter. He appears to have taken up his first Stratford abode in a road termed the Old Town, a street leading from the churchyard to the main portion of the borough. With the further exceptions that, in 1611, his name is found in a list of supporters to a highway bill, and that, in 1612, he commenced leasing from the Corporation a small piece of wooded land on the outskirts of the town, nothing whatever is known of his career during the lifetime of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's company were playing at Oxford on September 7, 1607, and towards the close of the same year he lost his brother Edmund, who, on Thursday, December 31, was buried at Southwark, in the church of

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St. Saviour's, "with a forenoone knell of the great bell." It may fairly be assumed that the burial in the church, ha mark of respect which was seldom paid to an actor, and which added very considerably to the expenses of the funeral, resulted from the poet's own affectionate directions; while the selection of the morning for the ceremony, then unusual at St. Saviour's, may have arisen from a wish to give some of the members of the Globe company the opportunity of attendance. Edmund Shakespeare was in the twenty-eighth year of his age at the time of his death, and is described in the register as a player. There can be little doubt that he was introduced to the stage by the great dramatist, but, from the absence of professional notice of him, it may be concluded that he did not attain to much theatrical eminence.

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Elizabeth, the only child of the Halls, was born in February, 1608, an event which conferred on Shakespeare the dignity of grandfather. The poet lived to see her attain the engaging ge of eight, and the fact of tl his entertaining a great affection for her des not require the support of probability derived from his traditionally recorded love of children. If he had not been extremely fond of the little girl, it is not likely that he would have specifically bequeathed so mere a child nearly the whole of his plate in addition to a valuable contingent interest in his pecuniary estate. It appears, from the records of some chancery proceedings, that she inherited in after life the shrewd business qualities of her grandfather, but, with this exception, nothing is known of her disposition or character.

In the spring of the year 1608, the apparently inartificial drama of Pericles was represented at the Globe Theater,