o basis of fact or of fair likelihood to stand
upon; there is not so much as a particle even of tradition to support
it. Rowe hints nothing of the sort; and surely his candor would not have
spared the parties, if he had found anything: it was the very point of
all others on which scandal would have been most apt to fasten and feed;
and yet even Aubrey, arrant old gossip as he was, supplies nothing to
justify it.

In default of other grounds, resort has been had to certain passages in
the poet's dramas. And Mr. White, though knowing, none better, the
poet's wonderful self-aloofness from his representations, thinks it
worth the while to make an exception in this particular case. Presuming
such and such things to be true in his own experience, the poet, our
author observes, must have thought of them while writing certain
passages. Our answer is, To be sure, he must have thought of them, and
he must have known that others would think of them too; and a reasonable
delicacy on his part would have counselled the withholding of anything
that he was conscious might be applied to his own domestic affairs. Does
not Mr. White see that his inferences in this are just the reverse of
what they should be? Sensible men do not write in their public pages
such things as would be almost sure to breed or to foster scandal about
their own names or their own homes. The man that has a secret cancer on
his person will be the last to speak of cancers in reference to others;
and if the truth of his own case be suspected at all, it will rather be
from his silence than from his speech. We can hardly think Shakespeare
was so wanting in a sense of propriety as to have written the passages
in question, but that he knew no man could say he was exposing the
foulness of his own nest.

But we are dwelling too long on this point; and we confess something of
impatience at Mr. White's treatment of it. His _animus_ in the thing is
shown, perhaps, in one slight mistake he has made. Speaking of the
lady's haste to "provide herself with a husband," he says, "In less than
five months after she obtained one she was delivered of a daughter." The
bishop's license for the marriage was dated November 28th, 1582, and
Susannah Shakespeare was baptized May 26th, 1583; thus leaving an
interval of but two days short of _six_ months between the marriage and
the birth. As Sir Hugh observes, "I like not when a 'oman has a great
peard."

We are moved to add one more item of