fresh by two members of the profession for which is claimed the honor
of having Shakespeare's name upon its roll,--William L. Rushton,
Esquire, a London Barrister, and John Campbell, Lord Chief Justice of
the Queen's Bench.[B] Lord Campbell, indeed, addressing himself to
Mr. John Payne Collier, says, (p. 21,) that this is a notion "first
suggested by Chalmers, and since countenanced by Malone, yourself, and
others." An assertion this which savors little of legal accuracy. For
Chalmers, so far from being the first to suggest that Shakespeare passed
his adolescent years in an attorney's office, was the first to sneer at
Malone for bringing forward that conjecture.[C] Malone, in his first
edition of Shakespeare's works, published in 1790, has this passage, in
the course of a discussion of the period when "Hamlet" was produced:--

"The comprehensive mind of our poet embraced almost every object of
Nature, every trade, every art, the manners of every description of men,
and the general language of almost every profession: but his knowledge
of legal terms is not such as might be acquired by the casual
observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of
_technical_ skill; and he is so fond of displaying it, on all occasions,
that I suspect he was early initiated in at least the forms of law, and
was employed, while he remained at Stratford, in the office of some
country attorney, who was at the same time a petty conveyancer, and
perhaps, also, the seneschal of some manor court."--Vol. I. Part I. p.
307.

[Footnote B: _Shakespeare a Lawyer_. By William L. Rushton. 16mo. pp.
50. London: 1858.

_Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements Considered_. By John Lord Campbell,
LL.D., F.R.S.E. 12mo. pp. 117. London: 1859.]

[Footnote C: Into the trap so innocently set the London _Athenaeum_ thus
plunges headlong:--"Chalmers, we believe, first put Shakespeare in an
attorney's office. Malone _accepted the hint_."]

To this, Chalmers, some years after, (1797,) in his "Apology for the
Believers in the Shakespeare Papers which were exhibited in Norfolk
Street," (some contemptible forgeries, by a young scapegrace named
William Ireland, which should not have deceived an English scholar of
six months' standing,) made the following reply:--

"Mr. Malone places the aspiring poet 'in the office of some country
attorney, or the seneschal of some manor court'; and for this violation
of probability he produces many passages from hi