One of the oldest and most interesting Shakespearean documents in existence is the narrative, by a traveller named Dowdall, of his observations in Warwickshire, and of his visit, on April 10, 1693, to Stratford church. He describes therein the bust and the tombstone of Shakespeare, and he adds these remarkable words: "The clerk that showed me this church is above eighty years old. He says that not one, for fear of the curse above said, dare touch his gravestone, though his wife and daughter did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him." Writers in modern days have been pleased to disparage that inscription and to conjecture that it was the work of a sexton and not of the poet; but no one denies that it has accomplished its purpose in preserving the sanctity of Shakespeare's rest. Its rugged strength, its simple pathos, its fitness, and its sincerity make it felt as unquestionably the utterance of Shakespeare himself, when it is read upon the slab that covers him. There the musing traveller full well conceives how dearly the poet must have loved the beautiful scenes of his birthplace, and with what intense longing he must have desired to sleep undisturbed in the most sacred spot in their bosom. He doubtless had some premonition of his approaching death. Three months before it came he made his will. A little later he saw the marriage of his younger daughter. Within less than a month of his death he executed the will, and thus set his affairs in order. His handwriting in the three signatures to that paper conspicuously exhibits the uncertainty and lassitude of shattered nerves. He was probably quite worn out. Within the space, at the utmost, of twenty-five years, he had written thirty-seven plays, one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, and two or more long poems; had passed through much and painful toil and through bitter sorrow; had made his fortune as author and actor; and had superintended, to excellent advantage, his property in London and his large interests in Stratford and its neighbourhood. The proclamation of health with which the will begins was doubtless a formality of legal custom. The story that he died of drinking too hard at a merry meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson is idle gossip. If in those last days of fatigue and presentiment he wrote the epitaph that has ever since marked his grave, it would naturally have taken the plainest fashion of speech. Such is its character; and no pilgrim to the poet's shrine could wish to see it changed:-- "Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare; Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones And cvrst be he yt moves my bones."