satire is said to have stung the man so
severely, that he never forgave it.

Shakespear died in the fifty-third year of his age, and was buried on
the North side of the chancel in the great church at Stratford, where
a monument is placed on the wall. The following is the inscription on
his grave-stone.

Good friend, for Jesus sake forbear,
To dig the dust inclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curs'd be he that moves my bones.
He had three daughters, of whom two lived to be married; Judith the
elder to Mr. Thomas Quincy, by whom she had three sons, who all died
without children, and Susannah, who was his favourite, to Dr. John
Hall, a physician of good reputation in that county. She left one
child, a daughter, who was married to Thomas Nash, Esq; and afterwards
to Sir John Bernard, of Abington, but deceased likewise without issue.

His dramatic writings were first published together in folio 1623 by
some of the actors of the different companies they had been acted in,
and perhaps by other servants of the theatre into whose hands copies
might have fallen, and since republished by Mr. Rowe, Mr. Pope, Mr.
Theobald, Sir Thomas Hanmer, and Mr. Warburton.

Ben Johnson in his discoveries has made a sort of essay towards the
character of Shakespear. I shall present it the reader in his own
words,

'I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to
Shakespear, that in writing he never blotted out a line. My answer
hath been, would he had blotted out a thousand! which they thought
a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their
ignorance, who chuse that circumstance to commend their friend by,
wherein he most faulted; and to justify my own character (for I lov'd
the man, and do honour to his memory, on this side idolatry, as much
as any). He was indeed honest, and of an open free nature, had an
excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he
flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should
be stopp'd. His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had
been so. Many times he fell into those things which could not escape
laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to
him, "Caesar thou dost me wrong."

He replied, "Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause;"

'And such like, which were ridiculous; but he redeemed his vices with
his virtues; there was ever more in them to be praised, than to be
pa