hounds to mistake the smell; the listening upon a hill for his pursuers; the turning and returning of poor Wat. Who ever described a horse with such a complete mastery of all the points of excellence? In his plays, all the niceties of falconry are touched upon; and the varieties of hawk-" haggard," "tasselgentle," "eyas-musket,"-spoken of with a master's knowledge. Hawking was the universal passion of his age, especially for the wealthy. Coursing was for the yeomen-such as Master Page. The love of all field-sports lasted half a century longer; and some of Shakspere's great dramatic successors have put out all their strength in their description. There are few things more spirited than the following passage from Massinger : "Dur. * I must have you To my country villa: rise before the sun, Cald. You talk of nothing. Dur. This ta'en as a preparative, to strengthen You shall hear such music from their tunable mouths, * Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 1. Scene 1. For we will have variety of delights, We'll to the field again; no game shall rise But we'll be ready for 't: if a hare, my greyhounds Shall be compell'd to seek protection under A cast of haggard falcons, by me mann'd, They did turn tail; but with their labouring wings And by turns bind with her; the frighted fowl, Cald. This cannot be, I grant, But pretty pastime. Dur. Pretty pastime, nephew! 'Tis royal sport. Then, for an evening flight, As he were sent a messenger to the moon, In such a place flies, as he seems to say, See me, or see me not! the partridge sprung, He makes his stoop; but, wanting breath, is forced To cancelier; then, with such speed, as if He carried lightning in his wings, he strikes The passage in which Massinger thus describes what had been presented to his observation is one of the many examples of the rare power which the dramatists of Shakspere's age possessed, the power of seeing nature with their own eyes. But we may almost venture to say that this power scarcely existed in dramatic poetry before Shakspere taught his contemporary poets that there was something better in art than the conventional images of books—the shadows of shadows. The wonderful superiority of Shakspere over all others, in stamping the minutest objects of creation, as well as the highest mysteries of the soul of man, with the impress of truth, must have been derived, in some degree, from his education, working with his genius. All his early experience must have been his education; and we therefore are not attempting mere fan *The Guardian, Act 1, Scene 1. The speakers are Durazza and Caldoro. ciful combinations of the individual with the circumstances of his social position, when we surround him with the scenes which belong to his locality, his time, and his condition of life. NOTE ON THE BALLAD UPON SIR THOMAS LUCY. MR. CAPELL, after noticing the tradition repeated by Mr. Thomas Jones, of Tarbick, gives us the first stanza of the ballad which Mr. Jones put down in writing as all he remembered of it. This stanza, worthless as it is, has been so often reprinted, that we can scarcely be justified in omitting it. It is as follows: "A parliamente member, a justice of peace, At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse; Yet an asse in his state We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate. But the tradition sprang up in another quarter. Mr. Oldys, the respectable antiquarian, has also preserved this stanza, with the following remarks:-" There was a very aged gentleman living in the neighbourhood of Stratford (where he died fifty years since), who had not only heard from several old people in that town of Shakspeare's transgression, but could remember the first stanza of that bitter ballad, which, repeating to one of his acquaintance, he preserved it in writing, and here it is, neither better nor worse, but faithfully transcribed from the copy, which his relation very courteously communicated to me."* The copy preserved by Oldys corresponds word by word with that printed by Capell; and it is therefore pretty evident that each were derived from the same source, the person who wrote down the verses from the memory of the one old gentleman. In truth, the whole matter looks rather more like an exercise of invention than of memory. Mr. de Quincey has expressed a very strong opinion" that these lines were a production of Charles II.'s reign, and applied to a Sir Thomas Lucy, not very far removed, if at all, from the age of him who first picked up the precious filth: the phrase 'parliament member' we believe to be quite unknown in the colloquial use of Queen Elizabeth." But he has overlooked a stronger point against the authenticity of the ballad. He says that the "scurrilous rondeau has been imputed to Shakespeare ever since the days of the credulous Rowe." This is a mistake. Rowe expressly says the ballad is "lost." It was not till the time of Oldys and Capell, nearly half a century after Rowe, that the single stanza was found. It was not published till seventy years after Rowe's 'Life of Shakspeare.' We have little doubt that the regret of Rowe that the ballad was lost was productive not only of the discovery, but of the creation, of the delicious fragment. By and by more was discovered, and the entire song 66 was found in a chest of drawers that formerly belonged to Mrs. Dorothy Tyler, of Shottery, near Stratford, who died in 1778, at the age of 80." This is Malone's account, who inserts the entire song in the Appendix to his posthumous 'Life of Shakspeare,' with the expression of his persuasion "that one part of this ballad is just as genuine as the other; that is, that the whole is a forgery." We believe, however, that the first stanza is an old forgery, and the remaining stanzas a modern one. If the ballad is held to be all of one piece, it is a self-evident forgery. We give the "entire song," of which the new stanzas have not even the merit of imitating the versification of the first attempt to degrade Shakspere to the character of a brutal doggrel-monger : "A parliement member, a justice of piece, At home a poore scarecrowe, in London an asse. * MS. Notes upon Langbaine, from which Steevens published the lines in 1778. He thinks hymself greate, yet an asse in hys state He's a haughty, proud, insolent knighte of the shire, Synge Lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it. To the sessions he went, and dyd sorely complain His parke had been rob'd, and his deer they were slain. Synge Lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it. He sayd twas a ryot, his men had been beat, Soe haughty was he when the fact was confess'd, Though Lucies a dozen he paints in his coat, If a iuvenile frolick he cannot forgive, We'll synge Lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it." Malone observes that the greater part of this precious relic of antiquity "is evidently formed on various passages in the first scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor, which certainly afford ground for believing that our author, on some account or other, had not the most profound respect for Sir Thomas Lucy. The dozen white luces, however, which Shallow is made to commend as 6 a good coat,' was not Sir Thomas Lucy's coat of arms.' *Life of Shakspeare, p. 141. |