Herod that he was eafed of a grievous melancholy by that means. Plato (7 de leg.) highly magnifies it, dividing it into three parts-by land, water, air. Xenophon (in Cyropæd.) graces it with a great name, Deorum munus, the gift of the gods, a princely fport, which they have ever used, faith Langius (Epist. 59, lib. ii.), fole almost and ordinary sport of our noblemen in Europe, and elsewhere all over the world. Bohemus (De Mor. Gent., lib. iii., cap. 12) ftiles it therefore ftudium nobilium; 'tis all their study, their exercise, ordinary business, all their talk; and indeed fome dote too much after it; they can do nothing else, discourse of naught elfe. Paulus Jovius (Defcr. Brit.) doth in fome fort tax our English nobility for it, for living in the country fo much, and too frequent use of it, as if they had no other means but hawking and hunting to approve themselves gentlemen with.

"Hawking comes near to hunting, the one in the air as the other on the earth, a sport as much affected as the other, by fome preferred. It was never heard of amongst the Romans, invented fome 1,200 years fince, and first mentioned by Firmicus (lib. v., cap. 8). The Greek emperors began it, and now nothing fo frequent; he is nobody that in the season hath not a hawk on his fift: a great art, and many books written on it. *** The Muscovian emperors reclaim eagles to fly at hinds,

foxes, &c., and fuch a one was fent for a prefent to Queen Elizabeth: fome reclaim ravens, caftrels, pies, &c., and train them for their pleasures.

"Fowling is more troublesome, but all out as delightfome to fome forts of men, be it with guns, lime, nets, glades, ginnes, ftrings, baits, pitfalls, pipes, calls, ftalking-horses, fetting-dogs, coy-ducks, or otherwise. Some much delight to take larks with day nets, small birds with draff-nets, plovers, partrich, herons, fnite, &c. *** Tycho Brahe, that great aftronomer, in the chorography of his Ifle of Huena and Castle of Uraneburge, puts down his nets and manner of catching fmall birds as an ornament and a recreation, wherein he himself was sometimes employed.” * * *

After enumerating fishing, which he terms "a kind of hunting by water," ringing, bowling, fhooting, "keelpins, tronks, coits, pitching bars, hurling, wrestling, leaping, running, fencing, muftring, fwimming, wafters, foils, foot-balls, balowns, quintans, &c., and many fuch, which are the common recreations of the country folks; riding of great horses, running at rings, tilts and turnaments, horfe races, wild-goofe chases, which are the difports of greater men, and good in themselves, though many gentlemen by that means gallop quite out of their fortunes;" he comes to "deambulatio per amana loca, to make a petty progress, a

merry journey now and then with fome good company, to vifit a friend, fee cities, caftles, towns,

Vifere fæpe amnes nitidos, peramanaque Tempe,

Et placidas fummis fectari in montibus auras'

(To fee the pleafant fields, the cryftal fountains,
And take the gentle air among the mountains);

to walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, mounts, and arbours, artificial wilderneffes, green thickets, arches, groves, lawns, and fuch like pleafant places, like that Antiochian Daphne, brooks, pools, fifh-ponds, betwixt wood and water, in a fair meadow, by a river fide, ubi varia avium cantationes, florum colores, pratorum frutices, &c., to disport in some pleasant plain, park, run up a steep hill fometimes, or fit in a fhady feat, must needs be a delectable recreation."

His enumeration of games for winter evenings is ftill fuller and more various. "The ordinary recreations which we have in winter, and in most solitary times bufy our minds with, are cards, tables, and dice, shovel-board, chefs play, the philofopher's game, fmall trunks, fhuttle-cock, billiards, mufic, mafks, finging, dancing, ulegames, frolicks, jefts, riddles, catches, purposes, questions and commands, merry tales of errant knights, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters, witches, fairies, goblins, friars, &c., such as the old women told Pfyche in Apuleius,

Boccace novels, and the reft, quorum auditione pueri delectantur, fenes narratione, which fome delight to hear, fome to tell."

Such were probably the amusements and employments in which Shakespere paffed his latter days; for he, no doubt, lived and amused himself like his neighbours in Stratford and its vicinity. He did not quit the Court and the fociety of London that he might fpend his time in poring over books in the country.

But, as Cowley, another poet, who fought for quiet in rural retirement, and healthful employment in the cultivation of a farm, complains:-" God laughs at man who says to his foul, Take thy cafe: I met presently not only with many little incumbrances and impediments, but with fo much fickness (a new miffortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine: yet I do neither repent nor alter my courfe. Non ego perfidum Dixi facramentum; nothing shall feparate me from a mistress [retirement] which I have loved fo long and have now at last married, though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet fo quietly with me as I hoped from her.

'Nec vos dulciffima mundi

Nomina, vos Mufe, libertas, otia, libri,
Hortique, fylvæque animâ remanente relinquam.'

(Nor by me e'er thall you,

You of all names the fweeteft and the best,
You, mufes, books, and liberty, and reft,
You, gardens, fields, and woods, forfaken be,
As long as life itself forfakes not me.)"

And fo difeafe and death overtook Shakefpere as they did Cowley, in that retreat where they both had hoped to find the rest which fate had hitherto denied them.

New Place had probably been a scene of much feftivity on February 10, 1615. Judith, Shakefpere's younger daughter, had been married to Thomas Quiney, his fellow townfman, and no doubt there was a gathering of all the family, and the wedding party walked up to the beautiful church, and paffed in through the porch and under the folar, of which Mr. Erneft Edwards has given us fuch a charming little picture, and there was a banquet, and the "brod filver and gilt bole" was filled with "canaris fack," and there was a dance, and probably a play or interlude was acted in the hall. And this was, perhaps, the occafion of Jonfon's and Drayton's visit to their old friend, when, according to Ward, these three "had a merrie meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespere died of a fever there contracted." Whatever may have been the cause of his death, it is certain that he died on the 23rd of April, 1616, a little more than two