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.

Concerning Shakespear’s first appearance in the playhouse.  When he came to London, he was without money and friends, and being a stranger he knew not to whom to apply, nor by what means to support himself.——­At that time coaches not being in use, and as gentlemen were accustomed to ride to the playhouse, Shakespear, driven to the last necessity, went to the playhouse door, and pick’d up a little money by taking care of the gentlemens horses who came to the play; he became eminent even in that profession, and was taken notice of for his diligence and skill in it; he had soon more business than he himself could manage, and at last hired boys under him, who were known by the name of Shakespear’s boys:  Some of the players accidentally conversing with him, found him so acute, and master of so fine a conversation, that struck therewith, they and recommended him to the house, in which he was first admitted in a very low station, but he did not long remain so, for he soon distinguished himself, if not as an extraordinary actor, at least as a fine writer.  His name is painted, as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of what sort of parts he used to play:  and Mr. Rowe says, “that tho’ he very carefully enquired, he found the top of his performance was the ghost in his own Hamlet.”  “I should have been much more pleased,” continues Rowe, “to have learned from some certain authority which was the first play he writ; it would be without doubt, a pleasure to any man curious in things of this kind, to see and know what was the first essay of a fancy like Shakespear’s.”  The highest date which Rowe has been able to trace, is Romeo and Juliet, in 1597, when the author was thirty-three years old; and Richard ii and iii the next year, viz. the thirty-fourth of his age.  Tho’ the order of time in which his several pieces were written be generally uncertain, yet there are passages in some few of them, that seem to fix their dates.  So the chorus at the end of the fourth act of Henry V by a compliment very handsomely