to him by Ben Jonson. "He was indeed (says his old antagonist) honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius." So also in his verses on our poet:

Look how the father's face

"Lives in his issue, even so the race

"Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines
"In his well-torned and true-filed lines."

In like manner he is represented by Spenser (if in The Tears of the Muses he is alluded to, which, it must be acknowledged is extremely probable,) under the endearing description of" our pleasant Willy," and "that same gentle spirit, from whose pen flow copious streams of honey and nectar." In a subsequent page I shall have occasion to quote another of his contemporaries, who is equally lavish in praising the uprightness of his conduct and the gentleness and civility of his demeanour. And conformable to all these ancient testimonies is that of Mr. Rowe, who informs us, from the traditional accounts received from his native town, that our poet's "pleasurable wit and good-nature engaged him in the acquaintance and entitled him to the friendship of the gentlemen of his neighbourhood at Stratford."

A man, whose manners were thus engaging, whose wit was thus ready, and whose mind was stored with such a plenitude of ideas and such copious assemblage of images as his writings exhibit, could not but have been what he is represented by Mr. Aubrey, a delightful companion.

"The humour of the constable in A Midsommer

night-Dreame he happened to take at Crendon in Bucks, (I think it was Midsomer-night that he happened to be there :) which is the road from London to Stratford; and there was living that constable about 1642, when I came first to Oxon. Mr. Jos. Howe is of the parish, and knew him."

It must be acknowledged, that there is here a slight mistake, there being no such character as a constable in A Midsummer-Night's Dream. The person in contemplation undoubtedly was DOGBERRY in Much Ado about Nothing. But this mistake of a name does not, in my apprehension, detract in the smallest degree from the credit of the fact itself; namely, that our poet, in his admirable character of a foolish constable, had in view an individual who lived in Crendon or Grendon, (for it is written both ways,) a town in Buckinghamshire, about thirteen miles from Oxford. Leonard Digges, who was Shakspeare's contemporary,has fallen into a similar error; for in the eulogy on our poet, he has supposed the character of MALVOLIO, which is found in Twelfth Night, to be in Much Ado about Nothing.2

As some account of the person from whom Mr. Aubrey derived this anecdote, who was of the same college with him at Oxford, may tend to establish its credit, I shall transcribe from Mr. Warton's preface to his Life of Sir Thomas Pope, such notices of Mr. Josias Howe, as he has been able to recover.

"He was born at Crendon in Bucks, [about the year 1611,] and elected a scholar of Trinity College June 12, 1632; admitted a fellow, being then bachelor of arts, May 26, 1637. By Hearne he is

* See Ancient and Modern Commendatory Verses, in Vol. II. p. 201.

3

called a great cavalier and loyalist, and a most ingenious man. He appears to have been a general and accomplished scholar, and in polite literature one of the ornaments of the university.-In 1644 he preached before King Charles the First, at Christ Church cathedral, Oxford. The sermon was printed, and in red letters, by his majesty's special command.-Soon after 1646, he was ejected from his fellowship by the presbyterians; and restored in 1660. He lived forty-two years, greatly respected, after his restitution, and arriving at the age of ninety, died fellow of the college where he constantly resided, August 28, 1701." Mr. Thomas Howe, the father of this Mr. Josias Howe, (as I learn from Wood,) was minister of Crendon, and contemporary with Shakspeare; and from him his son perhaps derived some information concerning our poet, which he might have communicated to his fellow-collegian, Aubrey. The anecdote relative to the constable of Crendon, however, does not stand on this ground, for we find that Mr. Josias Howe personally knew him, and that he was living

in 1642.

I now proceed to the remaining part of these anecdotes:

"Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men wherever they came. One time as he was at the taverne at Stratford, Mr. Combes, an old usurer,

Rob. Glouc. GLOSS. p. 669.

4

This custom of adding an s to many names, both in speaking and writing, was very common in the last age. Shakspeare's fellow-comedian, John Heminge, was always called Mr. Hemings by his contemporaries, and Lord Clarendon constantly writes Bishop Earles, instead of Bishop Earle.

"S (says Camden in his Remaines, 4to. 1605,) also is joyned to most [names] now, as Manors, Knoles, Crofts, Hilles, Combes," &c.

was to be buried;" he makes then this extemporary

epitaph upon

him :

• Ten in the hundred the devill allowes,

• But Combes will have twelve, he swears and he vowes: • If any one aske, who lies in this tomb,

Hoh! quoth the devill, 'tis my John o'Combe."

pre

In a former page I have proved, if I mistake not, from an examination of Mr. Combe's will, and other circumstances, that no credit is due to Mr. Rowe's account of our poet's having so incensed him by an epitaph which he made on him in his sence, at a tavern in Stratford, that the old gentleman never forgave him. And Mr. Aubrey's account of this matter, which I had not then seen, fully confirms what I suggested on the subject: for here we find, that the epitaph was made after Combe's death. Nor is this sprightly effusion inconsistent with Shakspeare's having lived in a certain degree of familiarity with that gentleman; whom he might have respected for some qualities, though he indulged himself in a sudden and playful censure of his inordinate attention to the acquirement of wealth, at a time when that ridicule could not affect him who was the object of it.

Mr. Combe was buried at Stratford, July 12, 1614. The entry in the Register of that parish confirms the observation made above; for, though written by a clergyman, it stands thus: July 12, 1614. Mr. John Combes, Gener."

This appears to have been in our poet's time a common form in writing epitaphs. In one which he wrote on Sir Thomas Stanley, which has been given in Vol. I. p. 91, we again meet with it:

"Ask, who lies here," &c.

Again, in Ben Jonson's epitaph on his son:

"Rest in soft peace, and ask'd, say, here doth lie
"Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."

Mr. Steevens has justly observed, that the verses exhibited by Mr. Rowe, contain not a jocular epitaph, but a malevolent prediction; and every reader will, I am sure, readily agree with him, that it is extremely improbable that Shakspeare should have poisoned the hour of confidence and friendship by producing one of the severest censures on one of his company, and so wantonly and publickly express his doubts concerning the salvation of one of his fellow creatures. The foregoing more accurate statement entirely vindicates our poet from this imputation.

These extemporary verses having, I suppose, not been set down in writing by their author, and being inaccurately transmitted to London, appear in an intirely different shape in Braithwaite's Remaines, and there we find them affixed to a tomb erected by Mr. Combe in his life-time. I have already shown that no such tomb was erected by Mr. Combe, and therefore Braithwaite's story is as little to be credited as Mr. Rowe's. That such various representations should be made of verses of which the author probably never gave a written copy, and perhaps never thought of after he had uttered them, is not at all extraordinary. Who has not, in his own experience, met with similar variations in the accounts of a transaction which passed but a few months before he had occasion to examine minutely and accurately into the real state of the fact?

In further support of Mr. Aubrey's exhibition of these verses, it may be observed, that in his copy the first couplet is original; in Mr. Rowe's exhibition of them it is borrowed from preceding epitaphs. In the fourth line, Ho (not OH ho, as Mr. Rowe has it,) was in Shakspeare's age the