a celebrated controversial writer, who spent his last years in caring for the sick in the poorest quarters of the town and in the preparation of medicines, in spite of the Elizabethan statute which held the lives of all "seminary priests" forfeit, and condemned to death any who housed or comforted a Jesuit. I have always thought that it was this old priest who suggested the beautiful character of Friar Laurence, in Romeo and Juliet, and when we read in Wood's Athena Oxoniensis that this old man was taken in, when dying, by the Catholic hostess of the Dolphin Inn, a vista of interesting speculation is opened, especially when we remember that Sir William d'Avenant was known to the Puritans as a Dog of Rome and that the name of the D'Avenants' inn, before it was called the "Crown," remains one of the many Shakespearian mysteries. Whatever the truth may be, it seems of relatively small importance to know what special creed was held by one whom those of all creeds |