name, like that of the poet, was William. From the general tone of the poems, and from some particular expressions, it has also been assumed that the friend addressed was superior in social rank to the writer.

Who was he? Was he in truth any one, or a mere phantasma of sonneteering brain? Some have conjectured the Earl of Southampton, and taken the initials in reverse order for Henry Wriothesley; more consistently, at least, it has been held by others, that they indicate William Herbert, who was, it is true, Earl of Pembroke, in 1609, when the collection was published, but not when they were probably written, having only become so in 1601-in 1597 he was only seventeen. The terms in which the dedication of the first folio declares the attachment of this noble pair to the person and poetry of Shakespeare, have been further quoted to show that such familiarity as he assumes, was not improper or impossible. Clarendon speaks of Pembroke as the most universally beloved and esteemed of any man of that age, of excellent parts and a graceful speaker upon any subject, having a good proportion of learning and a ready wit to apply it." In elder life he was not exempt from the weaknesses and frailties, that as we have said, beset the sensitive and the sympathetic-here, however, we leave the discussion, convinced that for my own part I am not likely to advance, still less to settle, even the preliminaries of a decision.

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Turning back for the notes of domestic and personal incidents during these last four or five years, we soon come upon a series of indications of the poet's worldly prosperity, and of his disposition to make his native place the scene of his enjoyment of it. Here not only still lived his father and mother, but his own wife and family, and here, in August, 1596, his only son Hamnet, in his eleventh year, died and was buried. It is as futile to speculate as to sentimentalize on a loss of which we only know the fact. It may have been sudden, may have been expected, a blow or a blessing, variously mingled as are the elements of good and evil. Who without proof

at hand shall speak of their proportions in a special case? Still, we may say thus much; Shakespeare's disposition of his property by his will proves that he had a feeling for transmitting the bulk of his acquisitions in a mass,— of founding a family in the sense of providing, by strict entail, that the chief of his descendants should be always able to maintain the standing of gentleman that he himself had won, or as he might be disposed to say-recovered. In this very year of 1596, is found a draft of arms the sanction of gentry, which had been applied for at the herald's office, probably somewhat earlier, in the name of his father, but doubtless on the motion of his now wealthy and distinguished son. The hope and joy of male succession is naturally bound up with these feelings, and the loss of it causes them a pang that is severe even when from the suffering of tenderer affections it is entirely secondary. A domestic affliction is constantly the turning point in the busiest and most eager lives; there is proof enough that however severe the stroke may have been, it did not paralyze the energies or the imagination of Shakespeare, but I am not certain that we may not trace its effect on some of his views, and some of his habits, from the changes he makes at this time in his property. In the Easter term of the following year he bought a dwelling-house, one of the best at Stratford, known as New Place, where he settled his family and at last died himself, and in succeeding years we find him bent on transferring his gains from London to Warwickshire, still guided in his investments by a certain regard for advancement or establishment in standing, as dependent on their form.

New Place is described in an instrument of the purchase as consisting of one messuage, two barns, and two gardens, with their appurtenances; the site is the angle of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane, immediately adjoining the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, (qy. Holy Cross,) the purchase money was £60, to be reckoned as equal to about five times that sum at present.

In the same year his father sold a small portion of the

premises in Henley Street-of which it appears by the deed he was still in occupation, for £2, probably a matter of accommodation to the neighbour who bought it: he is styled yeoman in the deed,-the grant of arms and gentry applied for not being yet completed. The original draft of this sets forth what was of course supplied by the applicants and willingly received by the heralds at hands that came with money in them :

"That the parents and late antecessors of John Shakespeare, were, for their valiant and faithful service, advanced and rewarded by the most prudent prince, King Henry the Seventh, of famous memory, sithence which time they have continued at those parts in good reputation and credit, and that the said John having married Mary, daughter and one of the heirs of Robert Arden, of Wilmcote, in the said county, gent. &c. &c."

From a MS. in Heralds' College, "the answer of Garter and Clarencieux Kings of Arms, to a libellous scroll against certain arms supposed to be wrongfully given," it seems that the arms given to Shakespeare were objected to as being in effect those of another family, and also on the ground that John Shakespeare was not entitled to arms by position or estate. The antiquaries do not seem to have considered whose bearings were so similar as to be interfered with; for the rest of the charge the heralds make note "This John hath a patierne thereof under Clarence Cookes hand in paper, xx years past.-A justice of peace, was bailiff, officer, and chief of the town of Stratford upon Avon 15 or 16 years past. That he hath lands and tenements of good wealth and substance, £500.—That he married a daughter and heir of Arden, a gent. of worship."

The heralds evidently desired only to be protected by a plausibility; and for the rest, the rule was admitted that those who were not in trade, and could afford arms, should have them. Mary Arden's parents and antecessors were accepted as those of her husband; the son's estate was ascribed to the father, a magistracy by office was passed off as a magistracy by commission, Robert Arden agricola becomes a gentleman of worship in virtue of his family name, and, last of all. Clarence Cooke, who

is safe, dead and gone, is made responsible for a grant of arms that appears nowhere in his records, and, indeed, is not referred to in the first draft of 1596. The objectors got nothing by their jealousy. I have noted a conjecture elsewhere, that it was through favouring them that Sir Thomas Lucy provoked Shakespeare to bring his own old coat into contempt. However this may be, in 1599 we have another draft, which incorporates all the pleas of defence, and positively outsteps the original, by purporting to be a confirmation of the ancient coat of arms granted by Clarencieux Cooke when John Shakespeare was high bailiff—a palpable invention since 1596, and also permitting him to impale the ancient arms of Arden; and when the business was finished, Shakespeare may have allowed himself a hearty laugh at the process of becoming a gentleman born, and having been so any time within these two hours."

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In the meantime, in 1597, he appears to have looked forward to the possibility of recovering his mother's estate of Asbyes from the family of the Lamberts, whose somewhat equivocal acquisition of it we have already alluded to. The records of the suit, of which the conclusion is unknown, is at least so far in favour of the Shakespeares, that their plea is much more circumstantial than the defendant's, and that John Lambert of Barton on the Heath does not pretend to say that they ever had full value for it, though he suggests that an improved value from conclusion of a lease, is the motive and temptation of their proceedings. Whether the matter was compromised, or how otherwise, is not to be said; and we must not read literally what the plaintiffs put forward of utter deficiency of wealth and influence as compared with their opponent.

The winter of 1597-8 was one of high prices and scarcity, which pressed more hardly upon Stratford from some disastrous fires that occurred there. A return of stocks of corn and malt in the town shows that Shakespeare's family was well cared for, their note being ten quarters. His father's name does not appear in the list,

but it might be hasty to assume that the two homes were now united at New Place. At the date of the return, February 4, Shakespeare himself was in London. This, with much else curious and interesting, we learn from a letter of Alderman Sturley-the correspondent is not named, but is apparently Richard Quiney.

"Most loving and beloved in the Lord, in plain English, we remember you in the Lord and ourselves unto you; I pray God send you comfortably home. This is one special remembrance from your father's motion; it seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. Shakspere is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yard land or other at Shottery, or near about us; he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the instructions you can give him thereof, and by the friends he can make therefore, we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and not impossible to hit. It obtained would advance him indeed, and would do us much good. Hoc movere et quantum in te est permovere ne necligas hoc enim et sibi et nobis maximi erit momenti: Hic labor hoc opus esset eximiæ et gloriæ et laudis sibi.

"You understand, brother, that our neighbours are grown with the wants they feel through the dearness of corn (we hear is beyond any all other countries that I can hear of, dear and over dear) malcontent: they have assembled together in a great number, and travelled to Sir Thos. Lucy on Friday last, to complain of our maltster; on Sunday to Sir Fulk Greville and Sir John Conway. I should have said, on Wednesday to Sir Ed. Grevill first. There is a meeting here expected to-morrow. The Lord knoweth to what end it will sort! Thos. West, returned from the two knights of the woodland, came home so full, that he said to Mr. Bailey that night, he hoped within a week to lead of them in a halter, meaning the maltsters; and I hope, said John Grannams, if God send my Lord of Essex down shortly, to see them hanged on gibbets at their own doors."

And this, with other news, as of the great bell broken and the bridge pavement mended, was no doubt retailed with other hints and suggestions to our countryman, Mr. Shakespeare, who, as events prove, would consider it all very much to his proceeding purpose.

At the end of 1598, Richard Quiney was in London, housed at the Bell Inn, in Carter Lane, on business of the Stratford Corporation, endeavouring to obtain some easement of public burdens, to alleviate the effects of the recent conflagrations. In a hasty interval he addressed