was handed down by Sir William D’Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his Affairs, I should not have ventur’d to have inserted, that my Lord Southampton, at one time, gave him a thousand Pounds, to enable him to go through with a Purchase which he heard he had a mind to.  A Bounty very great, and very rare at any time, and almost equal to that profuse Generosity the present Age has shewn to French Dancers and Italian Eunuchs.

What particular Habitude or Friendships he contracted with private Men, I have not been able to learn, more than that every one who had a true Taste of Merit, and could distinguish Men, had generally a just Value and Esteem for him.  His exceeding Candor and good Nature must certainly have inclin’d all the gentler Part of the World to love him, as the power of his Wit oblig’d the Men of the most delicate Knowledge and polite Learning to admire him.  Amongst these was the incomparable Mr. Edmond Spencer, who speaks of him in his Tears of the Muses, not only with the Praises due to a good Poet, but even lamenting his Absence with the tenderness of a Friend.  The Passage is in Thalia’s Complaint for the Decay of Dramatick Poetry, and the Contempt the Stage then lay under, amongst his Miscellaneous Works, p. 147.

      And he the Man, whom Nature’s self had made
    To mock her self, and Truth to imitate
    With kindly Counter under mimick Shade,
    Our pleasant Willy_, ah! is dead of late: 
    With whom all Joy and jolly Merriment
    Is also deaded, and in Dolour drent._

      Instead thereof, scoffing Scurrility
    And scorning Folly with Contempt is crept,
    Rolling in Rhimes of shameless Ribaudry,
    Without Regard or due Decorum_ kept;
    Each idle Wit at will presumes to make,
    And doth the Learned’s Task upon him take._

      But that same gentle Spirit, from whose Pen
    Large Streams of Honey and sweet Nectar_ flow,
    Scorning the Boldness such base-born Men,
    Which dare their Follies forth so rashly throw;
    Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell,
    Than so himself to Mockery to sell._

I know some People have been of Opinion, that Shakespear is not meant by Willy in the first Stanza of these Verses, because Spencer’s Death happen’d twenty Years before Shakespear’s.  But, besides that the Character is not applicable to any Man of that time but himself, it is plain by the last Stanza that Mr. Spencer does not mean that he was then really Dead, but only that he had with-drawn himself from the Publick, or at least with-held his Hand from Writing, out of a disgust he had taken at the then ill taste of the Town, and the mean Condition of the Stage.  Mr. Dryden was always of Opinion these Verses were meant of Shakespear; and ’tis highly probable they were so, since