"Du bist ein Gott dem Volke worden, Du kommst ein Feind zurück dem Orden, Und einen schlimmern _Wurm_ gebar. Dein Herz, als deiser _Drache_ war, Die _Schlange_ die das Herz vergiftet, Die Zwietracht und Verderben stiftet!" The monster which had yielded to the prowess of the disobedient son of the "Order" is elsewhere called "der _Wurm_:" "Hier hausete _der Wurm_ und lag, Den Raub erspähend Nacht und Tag;" while the "counterfeit presentment" of it--"Alles _bild ich nach genau_"--is delineated in the following lines: "In eine _Schlange_ endigt sich, Des Rückens ungeheure Länge Halb _Wurm_ erschien, halb Molch und Drache." The word in question is in this passage applicable perhaps to the _serpent_ section, but we have seen that it is used to denote the entire living animal. A. L. Middle Temple. * * * * * WAS SHAKSPEARE DESCENDED FROM A LANDED PROPRIETOR? (Vol. ix., p. 75.) I am inclined to think that MR. HALLIWELL has been misled by his old law-books, for upon looking at the principal authorities upon this point, I cannot find any such interpretation of the term _inheritance_ as that quoted by him from Cowell. The words "the inheritance," in the passage "heretofore the inheritance of William Shakspeare, Gent., deceased," would most certainly appear to imply that Shakspeare inherited the lands as heir-at-law to some one. But, however, it must not be concluded upon this alone that the poet's father was a landed proprietor, as the inheritance could proceed from any other ancestor to whom Shakspeare was by law heir. Blackstone, in his _Commentaries_, has the following: "Descent, or hereditary succession, is the title whereby a man on the death of his ancestor acquires his estate by right of representation, as his heir-at-law. An heir, therefore, is he upon whom the law casts the estate immediately on the death of the ancestor: and an estate, so descending to the heirs, is in Law called _the inheritance_."--Vol. ii. p. 201. {155} Again: "Purchase, _perquisitio_, taken in its largest and most extensive sense, is thus defined by Littleton; the possession of lands and tenements which a man hath by his own act or agreement, and not by descent from any of his ancestors or kindred. In this sense it is contra-distinguished from acquisition by right of blood, and includes every other method of coming to an estate, _but merely that by inheritance_: wherein the title is vested in a person, not by his own act or agreement, but by the single operation of law."--Vol. ii. p. 241.