MEMOIR

OF

SHAKSPEARE.

Thus while I wond'ring pause o'er SHAKSPEARE's page, I mark in visions of delight the Sage

High o'er the wrecks of man, who stands sublime,

A column in the melancholy waste;

Its cities humbled, and its glories past, Majestic mid the solitude of TIME!

WOLCOTT.

SUMMARY CHARACTER OF SHAKSPEARE.

"SHAKSPEARE was an eminent instance of the truth of that rule-Poeta non fit sed nascitur—One is not made, but born a poet. Indeed his learning was but very little; so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art which was used upon him! Many were the wit-combats betwixt HIM and BEN JONSON, which two I behold like a Spanish great Galleon, and an English Man of War! Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his perform-SHAKSPEARE, with the English Man of War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with ALL TIDES, and take advantage of ALL WINDS, by the quickness of his wit and invention !"

ances.

FULLER.

BRIEF MEMOIR

OF

Shakspeare and his Writings.

Peerless Shakspeare brightly shone
With a splendour not his own,
While, with eloquence divine,
Nature speaks through every line!

LADY MANNERS.

It is almost incredible how little is known of THE BRITISH BARD. "By a strange kind of fatality," says Miss Aikin in her interesting Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, "which excites at once our surprise and our unavailing regrets, the domestic and literary history of this GREAT LUMINARY of his age, are almost equally enveloped in doubt and obscurity." The account of his career, therefore, is dark and imperfect throughout the whole of its progress. Gleanings alone may be said to constitute his scanty biography.

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE was born April 23, 1564, at Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire. His father, a pious Catholic, was a respectable woolstapler, and a member of the Corporation ;

filling at one time the office of High Bailiff, or magistrate of that town. William was the second son of a numerous offspring. In subsequent life the parent was much reduced, and dismissed from the Corporation. This circumstance of his poverty is thought to have induced him to unite his occupation of wool-stapler to the trade of butcher, as an additional means of sup

porting his progeny.

Such," says Dr. Drake, are the very few circumstances which reiterated search has hitherto gleaned relative to the father of the Poet. Scanty as they must be pronounced, they lead to the conclusion that he was a moral and industrious man; that when fortune favoured him he was not indolent, but performed the duties of a magistrate with respectability and effect; and that in the hour of adversity he exerted every nerve to support with decency a numerous family."

The house in which THE POET was born was purchased in 1597 from the family of Underhill, and had been called the Great House, probably from its having been at that time the best in the town. In its present reduced state it has been the subject of the graphic art, and some minute particulars have been communicated to the public. The room in which THE BARD is said to have been born, is pencilled over by the names of visitors of all descriptions. Among other names are those of the Prince Regent, and Duke of Clarence, of Lucien Buonaparte, with the Russian and Austrian Princes; of the poets, Moore and Scott; of the celebrated actors, Kemble and Kean;

and of very many individuals of both Houses of Parliament! To the name of Lucien Buonaparte in an album at Stratford, are annexed the subsequent lines

The eye of GENIUS glistens to admire

How memory hails the sound of Shakspeare's lyre,
One tear I'll shed, to form a chrystal shrine
Of all that's grand, immortal, and divine!
Let princes o'er their subject kingdoms rule,
'Tis Shakspeare's province to command the soul!
To add one leaf, oh! Shakspeare, to thy bays,
How vain's the effort, and how mean my lays;
Immortal Shakspeare, o'er thy hallow'd page
AGE becomes taught, and Youth is e'en made sage!

The dwelling house has now one part a public house, and the other portion a butcher's shop. In the corner of a chimney stood an old oak chair, which had for a long series of years received nearly as many adorers as the celebrated shrine of the VIRGIN MARY, the Lady of Loretto! This precious relic was, in the year 1790, purchased by a Russian princess, and carried off in a post-chaise to London. And the far-famed mulberry tree, planted by the Poet's own hand, has been altogether annihilated.

In his infancy, SHAKSPEARE narrowly escaped the plague, which raged in his native town with a destructive fury. As to his education, he attended for a short period the free-school at Stratford, where he acquired the little Latin and less Greek, which Ben Jonson has attributed to him. Literature, though it began then to be cultivated, was not sufficiently rewarded.