--------I have------ Called forth the mutinous winds And 'twixt the green sea, and the azured vault Set roaring war; to the dread ratling thunder, Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak, With his own bolt; the strong bas'd promontory, Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluckt up The pine and cedar; graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, op'd and let them forth By my so potent art. So Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Stantia concutio cantu freta; nubila pello, Nubilaque induco, ventos abigoque, vocoque; Vivaque faxa sua convulsaque robora terra Et sylvas moveo; jubeoque tremiscere montes, Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchris. But to return to the incidents of his life: Upon his quitting the grammar school, he seems, to have entirely devoted himself to that way of living which his father proposed, and in order to settle in the world after a family manner, thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hatchway, said to have been a substantial Yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of domestic obscurity he continued for some time, till by an unhappy instance of misconduct, he was obliged to quit the place of his nativity, and take shelter in London, which luckily proved the occasion of displaying one of the greatest genius's that ever was known in dramatic poetry. He had the misfortune to fall into ill company: Among these were some who made a frequent practice of Deer-stealing, and who engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot near Stratford; for which he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge himself of this supposed ill usage, he made a ballad upon him; and tho' this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family for some time, and shelter himself in London. This Sir Thomas Lucy, was, it is said, afterwards ridiculed by Shakespear, under the well known character of Justice Shallow. It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is said to have made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. Here I cannot forbear relating a story which Sir William Davenant told Mr. Betterton, who communicated it to Mr. Rowe; Rowe told it Mr. Pope, and Mr. Pope told it to Dr. Newton, the late editor of Milton, and from a gentleman, who heard it from him, 'tis here related.