There are several points that would be novel in such a passage.  Among others, we would modestly indicate the incident of the two horsemen as evincing some ingenuity, and as likely to charm the reader by its freshness and originality.  But one point, we must confess, is not new, and that is the representation of Shakespeare as a lawyer.  The supposition, that the author of “Macbeth,” “Hamlet,” and “King Lear,” was a bustling young attorney, is of respectable age, and has years enough upon its beard, if not discretion.  It has been brought forward afresh by two members of the profession for which is claimed the honor of having Shakespeare’s name upon its roll,—­William L. Rushton, Esquire, a London Barrister, and John Campbell, Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench.[B] Lord Campbell, indeed, addressing himself to Mr. John Payne Collier, says, (p. 21,) that this is a notion “first suggested by Chalmers, and since countenanced by Malone, yourself, and others.”  An assertion this which savors little of legal accuracy.  For Chalmers, so far from being the first to suggest that Shakespeare passed his adolescent years in an attorney’s office, was the first to sneer at Malone for bringing forward that conjecture.[C] Malone, in his first edition of Shakespeare’s works, published in 1790, has this passage, in the course of a discussion of the period when “Hamlet” was produced:—­

“The comprehensive mind of our poet embraced almost every object of Nature, every trade, every art, the manners of every description of men, and the general language of almost every profession:  but his knowledge of legal terms is not such as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical skill; and he is so fond of displaying it, on all occasions, that I suspect he was early initiated in at least the forms of law, and was employed, while he remained at Stratford, in the office of some country attorney, who was at the same time a petty conveyancer, and perhaps, also, the seneschal of some manor court.”—­Vol.  I. Part I. p. 307.

[Footnote B:  Shakespeare a Lawyer.  By William L. Rushton. 16mo. pp. 50.  London:  1858.

Shakespeare’s Legal Acquirements Considered.  By John Lord Campbell, LL.D., F.R.S.E. 12mo. pp. 117.  London:  1859.]

[Footnote C:  Into the trap so innocently set the London Athenaeum thus plunges headlong:—­“Chalmers, we believe, first put Shakespeare in an attorney’s office.  Malone accepted the hint.”]

To this, Chalmers, some years after, (1797,) in his “Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare Papers which were exhibited in Norfolk Street,” (some contemptible forgeries, by a young scapegrace named William Ireland, which should not have deceived an English scholar of six months’ standing,) made the following reply:—­