Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, is the relater of an anecdote which shows the continuance of high favour to our author. It is expressed in these words: that “the most learned prince and great patron of learning, King James I., was pleased with his own hand to write an amicable letter to Mr. Shakspeare;” and Dr. Farmer supposes, with apparent probability, that this honour was conferred in return for the compliment paid to the monarch in ‘Macbeth.’ Shakspeare also possessed the esteem of, and was admitted to familiar intercourse with, the accomplished Earls of Southampton and Essex; and enjoyed the friendship of his great contemporary Ben Jonson. Of the poet’s career before the London public nothing authentic has come down to us; and perhaps if more were known, it might not be worth recording. But his retirement in 1611 or 1612, about four years before his death, though it afford no story, furnishes a pleasing reflection. He had left his native place, poor and almost unknown: he returned to it, not rich, but with a competence and an unblemished character. His good-natured wit made him a welcome member of private society when he no longer set the theatre in a roar; and he ended his days in habits of intimacy, and in some cases in the bonds of friendship, with the leading gentlemen of the neighbourhood. He died on his birthday, April 23, 1616, when he had completed his fifty-second year. If we look merely at the state in which he left his productions, we should be apt to conclude that he was insensible of their value. To quote the words of Dr. Johnson, “It does not appear that Shakspeare thought his works worthy of posterity; that he levied any ideal tribute upon future times, or had any further prospect than that of present popularity and present profit.” But the imperfect form in which they came before the public is not necessarily to be accounted for by this extravagance of humility. It is clear that any publication of his plays by himself would have interfered at first with his own interest, and afterwards with the interest of those to whom he made over his share in them; besides which, such was the revulsion of the public taste, that the publication of his works by Hemings and Condell was accounted a doubtful speculation. For several years after his death the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were more frequently acted than those of Shakspeare; and the beautiful works of the joint dramatists afterwards gave place to the rhyming rhapsodies of Dryden and the bombast of Lee. Garrick brought back the public to Shakspeare and every-day nature; Kemble exhibited him in the more refined dress of classical taste and philosophy.