stealing deer from Sir Thomas Lucy. The first stanza only of the ballad composed on that occasion could the man recall:

A parliament member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scarecrow, at London an ass,
If lowsie is Lucy, as some folk miscall it,
Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it.
He thinks himself great,

Yet an ass in his state,

We allow by his ears but with asses to mate;
If Lucy is lowsie, as some folk miscall it,
Sing lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it. (1)

[Compare "Merry Wives of Windsor," I. 1:

Slen. All his successors (gone before him) hath don't: and all his ancestors (that come after him) may: they may give the dozen white luces in their coats.

Shal. It is an old coat.

Evans. The dozen white luces do become an old coat well: it agrees well passant: it is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.

"Luce" and "louse," we are told, were pronounced alike.]

In a manuscript pocket-book which Archdeacon Plume of Rochester used, it is conjectured, about 1656 to note down various trifles, appears the following couplet ascribed to Shakespeare. It is on the authority of John Hackett that Plume quoted this mock epitaph on Ben Jonson:

Here lies Benjamin... w[it]h short hair up[on] his chin

Who w[hi]l[e] he lived w[as] a slow th[ing], and now he is d[ea]d is nothing. (2)

In a manuscript written, it is conjectured, not many years after the death of Shakespeare, occurs this passage:

"On John Combe a covetous rich man, Mr. Wm. Shakespeare wrote this at his request while he was yet living for his epitaph:

Who lies in this tomb?

Hough, quoth the devil, 'tis my son, John a'Combe. Finis.

"But, being dead and making the poor his heirs [Combe left Shakespeare five pounds], he after writes this for his epitaph:

However he lived judge not.

John Combe shall never be forgot,

While poor hath memory, for he did gather
To make the poor his issue: he their father

As record of his tilth and seeds

Did crown him in his latter needs. Finis. W. Shak." (3)

Aubrey, writing in 1680, quoted these lines as having been composed by Shakespeare at a tavern:

Ten in a hundred the devil allows,

But Combes will have twelve he swears and vows. If any one asks who lies in this tome,

Hoh! quoth the devil, 'tis my John o'Combe! (4)

Rowe, writing in 1709, asserted that the epitaph that Shakespeare composed to amuse Combe was this:

Ten-in-the-Hundred lies here ingrav'd,

'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd; If any man ask, who lies in this tomb?

Oh! ho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe. (5)

Stratford tradition credits Shakespeare with the authorship of the local jingle running as follows:

Dirty Gretton, dingy Greet,

Beggarly Winchcomb, Sudley sweet;
Hartshorn and Wittington Bell,
Andoversford and Merry Frog Mill. (6)

The following lines are inscribed on a gravestone in the church at Stratford. Tradition agrees in assigning both tomb and poetry to Shakespeare:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here;

Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones. (7)

CHAPTER SIX.

CONTEMPORARY ALLUSIONS, REAL AND SUPPOSED, TO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

1592. In an address "To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays, R. G. [Robert Greene] wisheth a better exercise and wisdom to prevent his extremeties," and said, to these playwrights:

"Base minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned; for unto none of you, like me, sought those burrs to cleave, those puppets (I mean) that speak from our mouths, those antics garnished in our colors. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding, is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding, shall, (were ye in the case that I am now) be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not, for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country. O, that I might entreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses,

and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions. I know the best husband of you all will never prove a usurer and the kindest of them all will never prove a kind nurse; yet, whilst you may, seek you better masters, for it is a pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude grooms." (1)

1592. Greene's letter, said Chettle later in the same year, referring to the epistle just quoted from, "written to divers playmakers, is offensively by one or two of them taken, and because on the dead they cannot be avenged they wilfully forge in their conceits a living author, and, after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but that it must light on me. How I have all the time of my conversing in printing hindered the Litter inveighing against scholars, it hath been very well known; and how in that I deal I can sufficiently prove. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be. The other, whom at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heat of living writers, and might have used my own discretion (especially in such a case) the author being dead, that I did not I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his demeanor no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes;