of fuch are to b be mentioned with Reverence. But who can bear, without Indignation, the fashionable Cant of every trifling Writer, whofe Infipidity paffes, with himself, for Politenefs, for pretending to be fhocked, forfooth, with the rude and favage Air of vulgar Critics; meaning fuch as Muretus, Scaliger, Cafaubon, Salmafius, Spanheim, Bentley. Whenj had it not been for the deathlefs Labours of fuch as thefe, the western World, at the Revival of Letters, had foon fallen back again into a State of Ignorance and Barbarity as deplorable as that from which Providence had juft redeemed it.

I

To conclude with an Obfervation of a fine Writer and great Philofopher of our own; which I would gladly bind, tho' with all Honour, as a Phylactery, on the Brow of every awful Grammarian, to teach him at once, the Ufe, and Limits of his Art: WORDS ARE THE MONEY OF FOOLS, AND THE COUNTERS OF WISE MEN.

SOME

SOME

ACCOUNT of the LIFE, &c.

OF

Mr. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Written by Mr. ROWE.

T feems to be a kind of refpect due to the memory

Io

of excellent men, especially of thofe whom their wit and learning have made famous, to deliver fome account of themselves, as well as their works, to Pofterity. For this reafon, how fond do we fee fome people of discovering any little perfonal ftory of the great men of Antiquity! their families, the common accidents of their lives, and even their fhape, make, and features have been the fubject of critical enquiries. How trifling foever this Curiofity may seem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly fatisfied with an account of any remarkable perfon, till we have heard him defcrib'd even to the very cloaths he wears. As for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an Author may fometimes conduce to the better understanding his book: and tho' the Works of Mr. Shakespeare may feem to many not to want a comment, yet I fancy fome little account of the man himself may not be thought improper to go along with them.

f 2

He

He was the fon of Mr. John Shakespeare, and was born at Stratford upon Avon in Warwickshire, in April 1564. His family, as appears by the Register and public Writings relating to that Town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen. His father, who was a confiderable dealer in wool, had fo large a family, ten children in all, that tho' he was his eldest fon, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, 'tis true, for fome time at a Free school, where 'tis probable he acquired what Latin he was mafter of: but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his affiftance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language. It is without controverfy, that in his works we scarce find any traces of any thing that looks like an imitation of the Ancients. The delicacy of his tafte, and the natural bent of his own great Genius, (equal, if not fuperior to fome of the beft of theirs) would certainly have led him to read and ftudy 'em with fo much pleafure, that fome of their fine images would naturally have infinuated themselves into and been mixed with his own writings: fo that his not copying at least fomething from them, may be an argument of his never having read 'em. Whether his ignorance of the Ancients were a disadvantage to him or no, may admit of a difpute: For tho' the knowledge of 'em might have made him more correct, yet it is not improbable but that the regularity and deference for them, which would have attended that correctness, might have reftrained fome of that fire, impetuofity, and even beautiful extravagance which we admire in Shakespeare: And I believe we are better pleafed with those thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination fupplied him fo abundantly with, than if he had given us the most beautiful paffages out of the Greek and Latin poets, and that in the most agreeable manner that it was poffible for a master of the English language to deliver 'em.

upon

Upon his leaving school, he feems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father propos'd to him; and in order to fettle 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, faid to have been a fubftantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of fettlement he continued for fome 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 tho' it seemed at firft to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occafion of exerting one of the greatest Genius's that ever was known in dramatick Poetry. He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them, fome that made a frequent practice of Deer-ftealing, engaged him with them more than once in robbing a Park that belong'd to Sir Thomas Lucy of Cherlecot, near Stratford. For this he was profecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, fomewhat too feverely; and in order to revenge that ill ufage, he made a ballad upon him. And tho' this, probably the firft effay of his Poetry, be loft, yet it is faid to have been fo very bitter, that it redoubled the profe cution against him to that degree, that he was oblig'd to leave his bufinefs and family in Warwickshire, for fome time, and fhelter himself in London.

It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is faid to have made his firft acquaintance in the playhouse. He was received into the company then in being, at firft in a very mean rank; but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the ftage, foon diftinguished him, if not as an extraordinary Actor, yet as an excellent Writer. His name is printed, as the custom was in those times, amongst thofe of the other Players, before fome old Plays, but without any particular account of what fort of parts he us'd to play; and tho' I have enquir'd, I could never meet with any further account of him this way, than that the top of his Performance was the ghoft in his own Hamlet. I fhould f. 3

have

have been much more pleas'd, to have learn'd from fome certain authority, which was the firft Play he wrote*; it would be without doubt a pleasure to any man, curious in things of this kind, to fee and know what was the firft effay of a fancy like Shakespeare's. Perhaps we are not to look for his beginnings, like thofe of other authors, among their leaft perfect writings; art had fo little, and nature fo large a share in what he did, that, for aught I know, the performances of his youth, as they were the moft vigorous, and had the most fire and ftrength of imagination in 'em, were the beft. I would not be thought by this to mean, that his fancy was fo loofe and extravagant, as to be independent on the rule and government of judgment; but that what he thought, was commonly fo great, fo juftly and rightly conceived in itself, that it wanted little or no correction, and was immediately approved by an impartial judgment at the first fight. But tho' the order of time in which the feveral pieces were written be generally uncertain, yet there are paffages in fome few of them which feem to fix their dates. So the Chorus at the end of the fourth Act of Henry V. by a compliment very handfomely turned to the Earl of Effex, fhews the Play to have been written when that Lord was General for the Queen in Ireland: And his Elogy upon Queen Elizabeth, and her fucceffor King James, in the latter end of his Henry VIII. is a proof of that Play's being written after the acceffion of the latter of thofe two Princes to the crown of England. Whatever the particular times of his writing were, the people of his age, who began to grow wonderfully fond of diverfions of this kind, could not but be highly pleased to fee a Genius arife amongst 'em of fo pleasurable, fo rich a vein, and fo plentifully capable of furnishing their favourite entertainments. Befides the advantages of his wit, he was in himself a good-natured man, of great sweetness in his manners,

*The highest date of any I can yet find, is Romeo and Juliet in 1597, when the Author was 33 years old; and Richard the 2d, and 3d, in the next year, viz. the 34th of his age.

and