osed as if holding a pen, and under the left hand lies a quarto sheet
of paper. The inscription, which was apparently by a London friend,
runs:

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet.

Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast?
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast
Within this monument; Shakespeare with whome
Quick nature dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe
Far more than cost; sith all yt he hath writt
Leaves living art but page to serve his witt.

Obiit ano. doi 1616 AEtatis 53 Die 23 Ap.

Personal character.

At the opening of Shakespeare's career Chettle wrote of his 'civil
demeanour' and of the reports of 'his uprightness of dealing which argues
his honesty.' In 1601--when near the zenith of his fame--he was
apostrophised as 'sweet Master Shakespeare' in the play of 'The Return
from Parnassus,' and that adjective was long after associated with his
name. In 1604 one Anthony Scoloker in a poem called 'Daiphantus'
bestowed on him the epithet 'friendly.' After the close of his career
Jonson wrote of him: 'I loved the man and do honour his memory, on this
side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest and of an open and
free nature.' {278a} No other contemporary left on record any definite
impression of Shakespeare's personal character, and the 'Sonnets,' which
alone of his literary work can be held to throw any illumination on a
personal trait, mainly reveal him in the light of one who was willing to
conform to all the conventional methods in vogue for strengthening the
bonds between a poet and a great patron. His literary practices and aims
were those of contemporary men of letters, and the difference in the
quality of his work and theirs was due not to conscious endeavour on his
part to act otherwise than they, but to the magic and involuntary working
of his genius. He seemed unconscious of his marvellous superiority to
his professional comrades. The references in his will to his
fellow-actors, and the spirit in which (as they announce in the First
Folio) they approached the task of collecting his works after his death,
corroborate the description of him as a sympathetic friend of gentle,
unassuming mien. The later traditions brought together by Aubrey depict
him as 'very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit,'
and there is much in other early posthumous refe