LIFE OF SHAKSPEARE. WRITTEN BY MR. ROWE. Ir seems to be a kind of respect due to the memory of excellent men, especially of those whom their wit and learning have made famous, to deliver some account of themselves, as well as their works, to posterity. For this reason, how fond do we see some people of discovering any little personal story of the great men of antiquity! their families, the common accidents of their lives, and even their shape, make, and features, have been the subject of critical inquiries. How trifling soever this curiosity may seem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly satisfied with an account of any remarkable person, till we have heard him described even to the very clothes he wears. As for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an author may sometimes conduce to the better understanding his book; and though the works of Mr. Shakspeare may seem to many not to want a comment, yet I fancy some little account of the man himself may not be thought improper to go along with them. was he son of Mr. Jonn Shakspeare, and ster mi micis venings relating us that town, is gentlemen. Els father, who was a sideranie deer in voul. had so arge a family, ildren in ail, that though he was his eldest he could give him no better education than his employment. Ee had bred him, it is true, for ime at a free-school, where, it is probable, ecured what Latin he was master of: but the areness of his circumstances, and the want of his *ssistance at home, forced his fariner to withdraw bent of his own great genius, (equal, if Farmer grociency in that language. It is without taces of anything that looks like an imitation of encovers, that in his works we scarce and any the ancients. The delicacy of his taste, and the act superior, to some of the best of theirs, would Cermin have led him to read and study them with 30 maca peasure, that some of their fine images would naturay have insinuated themselves into, and been mixed with his own writings; so that his Whether his ignorance of the ancients were a disbe an argument of his never having read them. Bot coozing advantage for though made him at least something from them, may him or no, may admit of a dispute : the knowledge of them might have more correct, yet it is not improbable the regularity and deference for them, would have attended that correctness, might but that which have restrained some of that fire, impetuosity, and even beautiful extravagance, which we admire in Shakspeare: and I believe we are better pleased with those thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination supplied him so abundantly with, than if he had given us the most beautiful passages out of the Greek and Latin poets, and that in the most agreeable manner that it was possible for a master of the English language to deliver them. Upon his leaving school, he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed to him; and in order to settle in the world after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of settlement he continued for some time, till an extravagance that he was guilty of, forced him both out of his country, and that way of living which he had taken up; and though it seemed at first to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occasion of exerting one of the greatest geniuses that ever was known in ́dramatick poetry. He had by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage, he made a |