the liberty of christening with his name! Where is the scholar who glories not in his scholarship? By universal testimony, the highest pleasure which an author draws from his own completed work, the pride of the poet in his own poem, is their chiefest payment. The simple fact--which stands out so prominently in the life of this man that nobody can gainsay it--that William Shakespeare took neither pride nor pleasure in any of the works which passed current with the rest of the world as his, might well make the most casual student of those days suspicious of a claim that, among his other accomplishments, William Shakespeare was an author at all. Just here we are referred to a passage in Fuller's "Worthies:" "Many were the wit combats," says Fuller, "between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson;... I beheld them," etc. But Fuller was only eight years old when Shakespeare died, and possibly spoke from hearsay, as it is hardly probable that an infant of such {269}tender years was permitted to spend his nights in "The Mermaid." Besides, these "wit combats" at "The Mermaid" are now said to be "_wet_ combats," i. e. drinking-bouts, by a long-adopted misprint. As a matter of fact, unless we are misled by a typographical error in the edition before us, * what Fuller {270}did actually say was, not "wit combats," but "wet combats." But even if they were "wit combats," and not friendly contests at ale-guzzling, like the early tournament at "Piping Pebworth" and "Drunken Bidford," the "wit" could not have been colossal, if we may judge from one example preserved in the Ashmolean manuscripts at Oxford, as stated by Capell. "Ben" (Jonson) and "Bill"' (Shakespeare) propose a joint epitaph. * The History of the Worthies of England. Endeavored by Thomas Fuller, D.D. Two volumes. (First printed in 1622.) A new edition, with a few Explanatory Notes by John Nichols, F. A.S. London, Edinburgh, and Perth. Printed for F. C. & J. Rivington and others. The reference to William Shakespeare is at page 414 of volume II., and is as follows: "WARWICKSHIRE "WRITERS SINCE THE REFORMATION. "William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in this county, in whom three eminent Poets may seem in some sort to be compounded. 1. Martial in the warlike sound of his surname (whence some may conjecture him of a military extraction), Hasli-vibrans or Shake-speare. 2. Ovid, the most naturall and witty of Poets; and hence it was that Queen Elizabeth, coming into a grammar school, made this extemporary verse-- "Persius a Crab-Staffe, Bawdy Martial, Ovid a fine Wag.