Bishop of Salisbury. Add to this, there was no one of that generation more universally esteemed. We have the highest character of him given by men, his contemporaries, who differed from one another so widely, as Lord Clarendon, Richard Baxter, and Isaac Walton. Walton, in his Life of Hooker, speaks of him in these terms:-Having had occasion to mention the happy. pen of Dr. Earle, now Lord Bishop of Salisbury,' he adds; ́ of whom I may justly say—that since Mr. Hooker died, none have lived whom God hath blessed with more innocent wisdom, more sanctified learning, or a more pious, peaceable, primitive temper; so that this excellent person seems to be only like himself, and our venerable Richard Hooker.'

PAGE 98.

I am glad to find myself supported in my opposition to the disparaging remark of Dr. Johnson by the high authority of Schlegel, who, in his notice of King Lear, observes that Shakspeare lays particular stress on the circumstance that the Britons

of that day were still heathens. And again : The persons of

this drama have only such a faint belief in Providence as heathens may be supposed to have.'-Lectures on Dramat. Literature, vol. ii. p. 207, sq.

PAGE 104.

I might have added in that place, that Shakspeare has introduced the notion of Guardian Angels in K. Henry IV. 2nd Part, Act ii. Sc. 2.

For the Boy-there is a good Angel about him ;

according to the teaching of the New Testament, more particularly with reference to the young; see S. Matt. xviii. 10, and` Bishop Bull's Works, vol. i. p. 301. But where, in the same play, Act i. Sc. 2, the Chief Justice says to Falstaff, 'You follow the young prince up and down like his ill angel, our poet was either

drawing merely upon his own imagination, or from what he had read respecting the belief of the heathen in genii, or dæmons, evil as well as good; -- a belief, of which he has made use in Antony and Cleopatra, Act ii. Sc. 3; and again in Macbeth, Act iii. Sc. I.

PAGE 163.

I was under the impression that the notes which bear the name of HENLEY in the Variorum edition of Shakspeare were from the pen of Dr. Samuel Henley, who was principal of Haileybury College, and died about fifty years ago. Accordingly he is so designated above, in p. 90, and elsewhere. But having since observed that Mr. James Boswell, the editor of that edition, styles him 'Mr. Henley,' I have thought it better (not being certain of his identity) in the page here referred to, and subsequently, where his name occurs, to do the same.

PAGE 194. Note †.

Since that note was written I have observed among the miscellaneous poems of Sir Philip Sidney, which doubtless Shakspeare had read, the same epigram of Catullus Englished' to his hand. See his Miscellaneous Works, p. 173. I must therefore surrender what looked to me like an evidence of the original Latin having been in the mind of our poet. An image very similar to Catullus', with the difference only between writing on water' and 'writing on ice,' is to be found in some verses-called St. Bernard's verses Latin and English, subjoined to Tusser's Five hundred points of good husbandry, with which, we may suppose, Shakspeare was acquainted, the first (complete) edition having been published in 1580.

Plus crede literis scriptis in glacie,
Quàm mundi fragilis vanæ fallaciæ.

More credit see thou give to letters wrote in ice,
Than unto vain deceits, of brittle world's device.

X

PAGE 222.

I have ascertained, through the kindness of the present vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, that the falsified copy of Shakspeare's will, though still in existence, is no longer exhibited among the 'relics,' which are now very properly taken under public superintendence, and committed to a responsible guardian. The forged or spurious will of which I am speaking as noticed above, in p. 222, is not to be confounded with (though it may have owed its origin to) the will of John Shakspeare, which purported to be that of our poet's father, though not discovered till about the year 1770,' and which is still more plainly upon the face of it a Romanist document. The history of its discovery, real or pretended, is curious. See Dr. Drake's Shakspeare and his Times, vol. i. pp. 8–16, and Mr. Malone's Life of Shakspeare, p. 516, sq. The latter concludes that the document in question, if genuine, was the will of another John Shakspeare-not the father, nor any relation of our poet.

PAGE 224.

That I was justified in suspecting a design, on our poet's part, to impute infidelity to the character of a Transalpine friar, may appear from a passage in Lord Burghley's Advices to his Son Robert Cecil, afterwards Earl of Salisbury: Suffer not thy sons to pass the Alps, for they shall learn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and Atheism.'-See Nares' Life of Lord Burghley, vol. iii. p. 513; Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, p. 47.

Forgiveness of injuries, 141, 184 Knowledge, value of, 195