when the Globe theatre was destroyed by fire. It is known that as late as March, 1613, he made the purchase of a house in the Blackfriars; and this is the last transaction in which he is positively ascertained to have been concerned in London. After this date, we hear of him only at Stratford-on-Avon, attending to business and the ordinary affairs of life, leisurely enjoying the social intercourse of his neighbors and his family, until his death in 1616. Indeed, throughout his life (as his most zealous biographer is obliged to confess), "the best evidence we can produce exhibits him as paying more regard to his social affairs than to his profession." 1 And so, it would seem to be true, as some still think, that, in the words of Pope,

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Shakespeare, whom you and every playhouse-bill
Style the divine, matchless, what you will,

For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despight."

§3. MANUSCRIPTS.

No original manuscript of any play, or poem, letter, or other prose composition, in the handwriting of William Shakespeare, has ever been discovered: none is known to have been preserved within the reach of the remotest definite tradition. It does not appear by any direct proof that the original manuscript of any one of the plays or poems was ever seen, even in his own time, in his own handwriting, under such circumstances as to afford any conclusive evidence, however probable, that he was the original author. "I remember," says Ben Jonson, "the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out line." We have only to suppose for a moment that the manuscripts may have been copied by him from some unknown complete and finished originals, which were kept a secret rom the world, and this wonder of the players would be

1 Halliwell, 194.

at once explained. Meres, in 1598, speaks of "his sugred sonnets among his private friends," as if they had been circulated in manuscript; but even this does not exclude the possibility of another having been the author, in the same way, though in itself highly improbable at first view. That he was universally reputed to be the author of these works, in his own time, not merely by the public in general, but by contemporary writers, his fellows of the theatre, the printers and publishers, and some great personages, and that the fact was never publicly questioned, in that age, nor indeed until a very recent date, must be admitted, though some evidence may be adduced herein, tending to show that the contrary was known, or at least strongly suspected, by some few persons at that day. It is enough here to remark, that this reputation alone is not absolutely conclusive of the question. No more is that other very pregnant circumstance, the fact that the "Venus and Adonis" and the "Rape of Lucrece" were dedicated to the Earl of Southampton under the name of William Shakespeare; for it is clearly possible, however improbable at first view, that even this may have been arranged and designed as a cover for the real author. In short, there is no positive and direct evidence in any contemporary record, fact, circumstance, or event, relating to Shakespeare, which is in itself of such a nature that it must be accepted in his favor as conclusive of the question of this authorship. He makes no mention of his manuscripts, or literary property, in his will; nor is there a trace of evidence that they ever came into the possession of his executors, or of any member of his family. But for this there may have been the less occasion, if we assume that the manuscript copies had all been sold to the theatre, and that not a single duplicate copy had ever been retained in his own possession. It might be possible, indeed, that some of them may have been burn: with the Globe theatre in 1613: when the Fortune was burnt. in 1621, we know the play-books were all lost. It is

a wholly gratuitous assumption, however, though barely possible, that they were heedlessly cast aside into old chests, and suffered to be destroyed by fires, or that they fell into the hands of ignorant persons to be used for waste paper. If he had contemplated a revision of his works for publication during his own life, from the accomplishment of which he was prevented by sudden illness and death, it is scarcely credible that he should not have given some instructions to that end, either to his executors in his will, or to some confidential friend on whom such injunction would not have been lost. Heming and Condell give us no intimation, in their Preface to the Folio of 1623, from what source they had received "the true original copies": we are left to infer that they had gathered them up from the theatres owned by the company.

§ 4. HIS LEARNING.

For the learning of Shakespeare, his knowledge of history and of the manners, customs, and literature of the ancients, his acquaintance with foreign languages, his natural science and metaphysical philosophy, his skill in the medical lore of his time, as also in the laws of England, his familiarity with the manners of the Court and high society, the vast range of his observation in all the realms of nature and art, as well as in all that pertains to the civil state, or to the affairs of private life, or to the characters, passions, and affections of men and women, or to human life and destiny, the subtle profundity of his intellect, and his extraordinary insight into all the relations of things, all this, and much more than can be stated, must wholly depend upon the argument to be drawn from the internal evidence contained in the writings themselves, not only unsupported in any adequate manner, but for the most part absolutely contradicted by the known facts of his personal history It is apparent that this argument can have no weight whatever in favor of William Shakespeare, until the

fact be established that he was really the author of these works; and this is the very question we have in hand.

The learning and philosophy of these plays of Shakespeare, especially since the feeble attempt of Dr. Farmer to make them appear to be possible for the supposed author, have been a matter of wonder to editorial critics, and a stumbling-block to all great writers, who have treated. of the subject. Even Dr. Johnson was willing to admit he must have had "Latin enough to grammaticize his English," while conceding that Ben Jonson must have known, and "ought to decide the controversy."1 Pope, knowing well enough that there was "certainly a vast difference between learning and languages, thought it was “plain he had much reading, at least," but was obliged, at last, to declare that "he seems to have known the world by intuition, to have looked through human nature at one glance, and to be the only author that gives ground for a very new opinion, that the philosopher and even the man of the world may be born, as well as the poet."2 Steevens and Malone, after laborious research, undertook to produce a list of the translations of ancient authors, known to have existed in English in the time of Shakespeare, as the source of all his classical erudition; but it falls far short of furnishing a satisfactory explanation of the matter, in our day, and in the face of numerous instances to the contrary, scarcely less decisive than this one, that the "Timon of Athens" turns out to have been founded in great part upon the untranslated Greek of Lucian; besides that it is now clear enough to the attentive scholar, that this author drew materials, ideas, and even expressions, from the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, and even from Plato, no less than from the Latin of Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and Tacitus, not to mention numerous others of the ancient 1 Johnson's Preface.

2 Pope's Preface.

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3 Knight's Stud. of Shaks., 71; Luc. Opera (ed. Dindorf, Lipsiæ, 1858), I.

classics, and apparently with the utmost indifference to the question whether they had ever been translated into English or not.

Indeed, his learning took the widest range. Mr. Collier, profoundly impressed by a certain frequency of legal terms and expressions in the plays, is ready, thereupon, to add an entire new passage to the known biography of William Shakespeare, to the effect that, in his youth, he had studied law in the office of an attorney, or, at least, a bailiff, at Stratford; and the learned essay of Lord Chief Justice Campbell,1 addressed to him upon the subject, comes to this conclusion upon Shakespeare's juridical phrases and forensic allusions: "On the retrospect I am amazed," says his Lordship, "not only by their number, but by the accuracy and propriety with which they are uniformly introduced." And he adds: "There is nothing so dangerous as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry." He thought we might be "justified in believing the fact that he was a clerk in an attorney's office at Stratford without any direct proof of the fact," mainly relying, with Mr. Collier, upon "the seemingly utter impossibility of Shakespeare having acquired, on any other theory, the wonderful knowledge of law which he undoubtedly displays." Nevertheless, his Lordship was constrained to warn his friend, that he had not "really become an absolute convert" to his side of the question; nor did he fail to remark, that the theory required us "implicitly to believe a fact, which, were it true, positive and irrefragable evidence, in Shakespeare's own handwriting" in the records of the courts, or in deeds and wills written or witnessed by him, and preserved in the archives at Stratford-on-Avon, might have been forthcoming to establish it; but, "after diligent search," none such had been, or could be, discovered.

The argument might justify, but does not require, an examination here into the special learning of this author in 1 Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements (N. York, 1859), p. 132.