ing. Rowe might well
scruple, as he did, the story of so large a gift,--equal to nearly
$30,000 in our time; but the fact of his scruples being overruled
shows that he had strong grounds for the statement. The sum may indeed
have been exaggerated; but all we know of the Earl assures us that he
could not but wish to make a handsome return for the _Venus and
Adonis_; and that whatever of the kind he did was bound to be
something rich and rare; while it was but of a piece with his approved
nobleness of character, to feel more the honour he was receiving than
that he was conferring by such an act of generosity. Might not this be
what Shakespeare meant by "the _warrant_ I have of your honourable
disposition"? That the Earl was both able and disposed to the amount
alleged, need not be scrupled: the only doubt has reference to the
Poet's occasions. Let us see, then, what these may have been.

In December, 1593, Richard Burbadge, who, his father having died or
retired, was then the leader of the Blackfriars company, signed a
contract for the building of the Globe theatre, in which Shakespeare
is known to have been a large owner. The Blackfriars was not
accommodation enough for the company's uses, but was entirely
covered-in, and furnished suitably for the Winter. The Globe, made
larger, and designed for Summer use, was a round wooden building, open
to the sky, with the stage protected by an overhanging roof. All
things considered, then, it is not incredible that the munificent Earl
may have bestowed even as large a sum as a thousand pounds, to enable
the Poet to do what he wished towards the new enterprise.

The next authentic notice we have of Shakespeare is a public tribute
of admiration from the highest source that could have yielded any
thing of the sort at that time. In 1594, Edmund Spenser published his
_Colin Clout's Come Home again_, which has these lines:

"And there, though last not least, is AEtion:
A gentler Shepherd may nowhere be found;
Whose Muse, full of high thought's invention,
Doth, like himself, heroically sound."

This was Spenser's delicate way of suggesting the Poet's name. Ben
Jonson has a like allusion in his lines,--"To the Memory of my beloved
Mr. William Shakespeare":

"In each of which he seems to _shake a lance_
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance."

There can be little doubt, though we have no certain knowledge on the
point, that by this time the Poet's genius ha