"I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all; he frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days he lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for that he had an allowance so large that {069}he spent at the rate of £1,000 a year, as I have heard." "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merrie meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feaver there contracted." Next, chronologically, we come to a gentleman named Aubrey. This Mr. Aubrey was himself a native of Warwickshire; was born in 1627--that is, eleven years after Shakespeare died. He entered gentleman commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, and so, presumably, was no Puritan. He was considerable of a scholar himself, and was esteemed, we are told, a Latin poet of no mean abilities, he was admitted a barrister of the Inner Temple in 1646; and so, a scholar, a poet, and a lawyer, might presumably know the difference between a wag and a genius. His manuscripts are preserved in the Ashmolean Museum. He gives an account of his fellow-countyman, and, coming as it does, next to Dominie Ward's, nearer to the lifetime of William Shakespeare than any chronicle extant, (Malone admits it was not written later than 1680), we give it entire: "Mr. William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of his neighbours that, when he was a boy, he exercised his father's trade; but when he killed a calfe he would doe it in a high style, and make a speech. There was, at this time, another butcher's son in that towne, that was held not at all inferior to him for a natural witt, his acquaintance and coetanean, but died young. This Wm. being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about eighteen, {070}and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act exceedingly well. (Now B. Jonson never was a good actor, but an excellent instructor.) He began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very lowe, and his plays took well. He was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a verie redie and pleasant smooth witt. The humour of the Constable in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' he happened to take at Gremlon, in Bucks, * which is the road from London to Stratford, and there was living that Constable, about 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Mr. Jos. Howe is of that parish, and knew him. * Aubrey says, in a note at this place: "I think it was a midsummer's night that he happened there. But there is no Constable in 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'" Aubrey probably intended reference to Dogberry, in the "Much Ado." Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men dayly, wherever they came. One time, as he was at Stratford-upon-Avon, one Combes, an old rich usurer, was to be buryed; he makes there this extemporary epitaph:=