will and in other writings. It is a poor ambition which seeks distinction by changes such as these, in which there is manifested neither labour nor genius. If we must have innovations on established forms of writing or speech, let them, at least, bring with them the proofs of reflection, and the stamp of mind. Yet Pinkerton has not wanted. those who have fallen by the same temptation to which he yielded. It is sufficient for the support of the old orthography, that Shakespeare or Shakespear was the poet's own way of printing his name; but, it may be added, that his name appears thus in the printed writings of his friends and contemporaries almost every where, Camden, Jonson, Heminge, and others: who, indeed, till very recent times, ever thought of printing the name Shakspere? But print it as we may, with the first syllable long, or the first syllable short, we must pronounce that syllable long, if we would not destroy much of the fine poetry in which the name is embalmed:

Renowned Chaucer lie a thought more nigh
To learned Spenser, and rare Beaumont lie

A little nearer Spenser, to make room

For Shakespeare in your three-fold, four-fold tomb.

Can any ear be so unmusical as not to perceive that in the last of these singular lines we require a grave syllable in the second place?*

Letters containing various criticisms on passages of Shakespeare. He prints the name every where Shakspere. I have used a qualified expression when speaking of the signatures to the will. Respecting one or two of them it would not, I think, be safe to affirm any thing very positively. In the body of the will itself the name is written in a quite different orthography.

*The lines are part of Basse's Epitaph. I quote them rather than many others which present themselves, for the sake of the transposition of the names of Chaucer and Spenser, which is in part on the authority of a copy in a nearly contemporary hand in a manuscript at the British Museum, Harl. 1749, but with some corrections, the copy being in some respects faulty, but giving us what is clearly the true reading in Renowned Chaucer.' They are usually printed Renowned Spenser,' &c.; but renowned' suits better with Chaucer, and his contemporaries delighted to speak of Spenser as the learned poet:

Can any one doubt how Jonson meant the name to be pronounced when he wrote

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,

Am I thus ample to thy book and fame.

Or he who wrote in a noble rivalry of Jonson, and whose still undetected incognito is one of the greatest reproaches to the antiquaries of English poetical criticism,*

This—and much more which cannot be expressed
But by himself, his tongue, and his own breast,—
Was Shakespeare's freehold.—

Or take the better known lines of Milton

:

What! needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones

The labour of an age in piled stones.

But we may ask the advocates of the orthographies which have been propounded as to supersede that to which the public eye was long accustomed, whether any of the poets who have sought to express their devotion to him, the greatest of them all, had any other idea than that their lines should be read with both syllables in their lengthened sound? Enough has now been said on this subject; and I shall dismiss it for ever with one remark. We are not to look to the

Above the rest so happy maist thou be;
For learned Colin lays his pipes to gage,
And is to Fayrie gon a pilgrimage :
The more our moan.

Drayton's Third Eclogue.

*The signature is J. M. S. Jasper Mayne, Student' is the received explanation; but it may be questioned whether he was equal to the production of them, though there are verses of his, inferior indeed, but not very unlike them. They could not be Milton's. I have heard Master John Selden' as a conjecture, and there are some probabilities attending it. Mr. Boaden wrote an elegant criticism upon these lines, and in assigning them to their author he treats the signature as a mere blind, and boldly asserts that they are Chapman's. There were many verse writers of the period, the initial letters of whose names were J. M. but they are all obscure men except Mayne and Milton; and he could have been no common person who produced this noble tribute to the memory and muse of Shakespeare.

private manuscript of any person of those times as the guide to the mode in which a name should be written by ourselves when we possess printed evidence tolerably uniform from the person himself, and his contemporaries ;-unless, indeed, we are prepared to unsettle all the established orthography of English names. Shall Lady Jane Grey become Lady Jane Graye, yet it is certain that she wrote her name thus? Shall the Dudleys become Duddeleys, or the Cromwells Crumwells? These are but a very few of the distinguished names of the Elizabethan period which would fall before the scythe of such innovation.*

Research or good fortune may hereafter bring to light earlier instances of the name; but the first that has presented itself to me is of the year in which Thomas Shepeye and Henry Wilkoc were bailiffs of Coventry, which was, I believe, in the reign of Henry the Fourth. They account into the Exchequer for two shillings for the goods and chattels of Thomas Shakespere merc'. (which appears to be an abbreviation of mercerio) who being indicted of felony had fled. No very satisfactory commencement of the history of a family; but this piece of evidence serves as well as a better to prove the existence of the name, to exhibit something of the quality in which the party lived, and to shew that the family, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, were seated in the county in which we find them afterwards living, and in that particular part of it, the Arden district, where the name was afterwards most frequent. Coventry may then be taken as, according to our present knowledge, the original habitat of the Shakespeares, and it was perhaps among the citizens

* I notice with great pleasure that a stand is being made in defence of the true orthography by Mr. Collier, in his Edition of the Works, who gives the poet his name in its fair proportions Shakespeare, and the Society of which he is the Director calls itself the Shakespeare Society.

of that antient city that the name arose which has since been so celebrated.

Shakespeare, we know, his race of honour and profit run, returned to end his days in the town in which he was born; and in the search for the name in early times I have scarcely found it any where except in the southern parts of Warwickshire and the adjacent parts of the counties of Worcester and Gloucester; so that it seems as if the family in general had felt in early times a strong affection for their native soil. Wide negative assertions it is neither safe nor wise to make, but I may state that, as far as my own knowledge at present extends, there had been no permanent settlement of Shakespeares at the beginning of the sixteenth century any where else, except that there were some persons of the name in the country about Derby and Mansfield, of whom were Richard Shakesper, one of the persons to whom Dame Cecily Flogan conveyed lands for public uses at Mansfield at the very beginning of the reign of Henry the Eighth, and Peter Schakespeyr, who, in the 36th of that reign, was among the inhabitants of that town, and John Shakespere, who was living at the same time in the ward or dosenry of the Sadlegate at Derby. In the reign of Elizabeth there was not, I have reason to think, any other person of the name of Shakespeare living in London, besides the poet and a John Shakspere, who in 1600 lived in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields. In the reign of Philip and Mary a John Shakespere was rector of Fliford, in the diocese of Worcester; and among the monks who were expelled from the monastery of Bordesley in that diocese, we find the name of a Roger Shakespere, to whom was granted an annuity of one hundred shillings during life.

The earliest will of any person of the name which is now to be found in the Register Office at Worcester is of the year 1539. The testator is a Thomas Shakspere. He desires to

be buried in the churchyard of St. Nicholas at Alcester before our Lady Chantry, and he bequeaths 38. 4d. to the church. He seems to have died in early life, as both his parents were living, Richard his father and Margaret his mother, to each of whom he leaves twenty shillings. He gives the same sum to Alexander Fox, his wife's son, and the remainder of his property to his wife Margaret and his son William, who was then under years of discretion. The rector of Alcester, Sir William Denton, is a witness, and it was proved not long after the date, at Stratford on Avon, in the chapel of the Holy Trinity there, before Rowland Taylor, LL.D. Commissary of Hugh, Bishop of Worcester, both afterwards Protestant martyrs.

The Richard Shakspere mentioned in this will, is probably the person of that name who occurs in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of the 26th of King Henry the Eighth, as bailiff to the nuns of the neighbouring priory of Wroxhall, and collector of their rents, with a fee of 40 shillings a year. This answers to the year 1534. The bailiffship of a monastery was an office of great respectability; and, the lands being often large, one of no small local influence. It appears also by accounts of Agnes Lyde, the late prioress, now in the Augmentation Office, that Richard Shakspere was a tenant of the monastery also. He held a cottage with its appurtenances, in the lordship of Wroxhall, in 1536; and was tenant jointly with Richard Wodham of three crofts and a grove in Hasseley, demised by indenture under the common seal, on June 1, in the 15th of Henry the Eighth, 1523-4.

In that year Richard Shaksper was living at Wroxhall, and was assessed on goods of the value of 40 shillings to the subsidy then granted. In the 37th of that reign, 1545-6, he appears to have been dead, his name not being found in the Subsidy Roll, but three other Shakespeares are assessed