Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/138

 one would zealously embrace every method of information that could contribute to recover them from the injuries with which they have so long lain overwhelmed.

It is certain, that if we have first admired the man in his writings, his case is so circumstanced, that we must naturally admire the writings in the man: that if we go back to take a view of his education, and the employment in life which fortune had cut out for him, we shall retain the stronger ideas of his extensive genius.

His, father, we are told, was a considerable dealer in wool, but having no fewer than ten children, of whom our Shakespeare was the eldest, the best education he could afford him was no better than to qualify him for his own business and employment. I cannot affirm with any certainty how long his father lived; but I take him to be the same Mr. John Shakespeare who was living in the year 1599, and who then, in honour of his son, took out an extract of his family-arms from the herald’s office; by which it appears, that he had been officer and bailiff of Stratford upon Avo in Warwickshire; and that he enjoyed some hereditary lands and tenements, the reward of his great grandfather’s faithful and approved service to king Henry VII.

Be this as it will, our Shakespeare, it seems was bred for some time at a free-school; the very free-school, I presume, founded at Stratford: where, we are told, he acquired what Latin he was master of: but that his father being obliged, through narrowness of circumstance, to withdraw him too soon from thence, he was thereby unhappily prevented from making any proficiency in the dead languages: a point that will deserve some little discussion in the sequel of this dissertation.

How long the continued in his father’s way of business, either as an assistant to him, or on his own proper account, no notices are left to inform us: nor have I been able to learn precisely at what period of life he quitted his native Stratford, and began his acquaintance with London and and the stage.

In order to settle in the world after a family-manner, he thought fit, Mr. Rowe acquaints us, to marry while he was yet very young. It is certain, he did so: for by the monument in Stratford church, erected to the memory of his daughter susanha, the wife of John Hall, gentleman, it appears, that she died on the 2d of July, in the year 1649,