st put,
It was for gentle Shakspeare cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature to outdo the life.
Oh! could he have but drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he hath hit
His face, &c.

Hear now Nathan Drake: 'The wretched engraving thus undeservedly
eulogised;' and Mr Steevens calls it 'Shakspeare's countenance
deformed by Droeshout'--like the sign of Sir Roger turned into the
Saracen's Head.

We might, did space allow, also allude to the celebrated 'wit-combats
at the Mermaid,' where Shakspeare's wit, when recorded, becomes truly
un-Shakspearian. Let one example suffice, stated by Capell. 'Ben' and
'Bill' propose a joint epitaph. Ben begins:

'Here lies Ben Jonson,
Who was once one--'

Shakspeare concludes:

'That, while he lived, was a _slow_ thing;
And now, being dead, is a _no_-thing.'

We doubt if Benedict would have gained Beatrice had he wooed her in
this style, and yet its tiny sparkle seems a beam of light contrasted
with the dull darkness of the rest. In fine, we maintain we have no
more direct evidence to shew that Shakspeare wrote Hamlet's soliloquy,
than we have that he wrote the epitaph on John a Coombe, the ballad on
Sir Thomas Lucy, or the epitaph to spare his 'bones' on his own
tombstone--all of which the commentators are now determined to
repudiate.

Assuming, then, that we have proved, to our own extreme
dissatisfaction, the probability that Shakspeare kept a poet, we are
bound to say that the intercourse between them must have been one of
almost unexampled cordiality and kindness; for seldom can we discover
anything like hostility in the poet to his employer; but there must
have been two little miffs--one of which occurred during the writing
of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and the other before the publication
of the _Twelfth Night_. Shakspeare, it is well known, in very early
youth, married a girl a good deal older than himself, and there is at
least no evidence to shew that, as usual, he did not repent his
choice. Now, we will admit that it was unhandsome in the poet at the
beginning of the _Dream_ to make Hermia and Lysander discourse upon
this delicate subject--

_Hermia._ O cross! too high to be enthralled to low!

_Lysander._ Or else misgraffed in respect of years.

_Her._ (_the lady._) O spite! too old to be engaged to young!

But matters were still worse, when the Duke, in the _Twelfth Night_,
exclaims:

'Too