onnected with business documents--namely, the 'Willme
Shakspere' on the volume of Montaigne--is not preceded by any remark
whatever, by any sentence that might give a faint echo of _Hamlet_.
Now this, to say the least, is singular to the very last degree. The
unsurpassed brilliancy of the writer throws not one single spark to
make noticeable the quiet uniform mediocrity of the man. Is it more
difficult to suppose that Shakspeare was not the author of the poetry
ascribed to him, than to account for the fact, that there is nothing
in the recorded or traditionary life of Shakspeare which in any way
connects the poet with the man? It will not do to use the common
hackneyed expression, that Shakspeare had a 'genius so essentially
dramatic, that all other writers the world has seen have never
approached him in his power of going out of himself.' Even the
inspired writers of Scripture have their style and their expressions
modified, and adapted to the peculiar idiosyncrasy and accidental
position of the respective men; and taking human nature as we find it,
we think it much easier to suppose that Shakspeare never once appears
personally in his dramas, because his interest in them was not
personal, but pecuniary. William Shakspeare, the man, was
comparatively well known. He was born in Stratford-on-Avon, of
respectable parentage; he married Anne Hathaway; had children;
apparently became unsettled; went to London to push his fortune; made
a deal of money by theatrical speculations, and by the profits of
certain plays, of which he was reputed to be the author; then retired
quietly to the country, and was heard of no more, excepting that a few
years afterwards old Aubrey states that 'Shakspeare, Drayton, and Ben
Jonson had a merry-meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard, for
Shakspeare died of a fever there contracted.' Brandish not thy dagger,
Melpomene, at this profanation! The scandal is not ours, but Aubrey's,
Shakspeare's earliest biographer, but who did not write till forty-six
years after his death. His name and signature are connected with the
buying and selling of land and theatrical shares, and such-like
commonplace transactions; and his last will and testament, with which
everybody is familiar, is as plain and prosaic as if it had been the
production of a pig-headed prerogative lawyer. Now, in all this we see
a sensible, sagacious, cautious, persevering man, who certainly was
free from the rashness and (excepting the clos