Next, chronologically, comes the contribution preserved to us by a Reverend Richard Davies, Rector of Sapperton, * in Gloucestershire. The Reverend William Fulman, who died in 1688, bequeathed certain of his biographical collections to this Reverend Davies. Davies died in 1708, leaving many annotations to his friend's manuscripts. Among these annotations he writes the following of William Shakespeare: "William Shakespeare was born at Stratford upon Avon, in Warwickshire, about 1563-4, much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipt, and some times imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country to his great advancement. But his revenge was so great that he is his 'Justice Clodpate' ** and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three lowses rampant for his arms. From an actor he became a composer. He died April 23, 1616, aetat fifty-three, probably at Stratford--for there he is buried, and hath a monument (Dugd.) * His MS. additions to the MSS. of the Rev. William Fulman (in which the allusion to Shakespeare is made) are all in the library of Corpus Christ! College, Oxford. ** Probably a reference to Justice Shallow, in "Merry Wives of Windsor." p. 520. {074}on which he lays a heavy curse upon any one who shall remove his bones. He died a papist. Whatever these may be worth--for, of course, like the rest, they are mere second-hand and hearsay--it is fair to include them in a collection of what the law calls "general reputation," "general report," or "common fame," and it is fair to offset this collection, at least, against that "common fame" and "common reputation" which has grown up during the last hundred years or so concerning William Shakespeare, which is so unboundedly to his glory and renown. Much later along, we are made acquainted, too, with a tradition, related by one John Jordan, a townsman of Stratford, (who was known in the days of Malone and the Ireland forgeries as "the Stratford poet,") who claimed to have succeeded in the line of descent to a tradition of an alleged drinking-bout of Shakespeare and others (as representing Stratford) against the champions of Pebworth, Marston, Hillborough, Grafton, Wixford, Broom, and Bidford, in which William was so worsted that his legs refused to carry him farther homeward than a certain thorn-tree, thereafter to come in for its share of worshipful adoration from the Shakespearean sticklers. But the tradition is of no value except as additional testimony to the impression of his boon companions, associates, and contemporaries, that William Shakespeare was a jolly dog who loved his frolic, his pot of ale, and his wench--was almost any thing, in short, except the student of history, antiquity, and classic manners, no less than the scholar of his own times, that he has been created since by those who knew him not. Nothing travels faster in