This melancholy detail had due effect upon the heart and purse of the Critic.
The latter appeared rather surprised at the variety of small facts noted by his correspondent; and in return, always alive to the chance of imposition upon an inquisitive antiquary, questions him minutely on the origin of each. More than fifty queries as to date, name, and source whence obtained, occupy three or four of the first letters. Several hundreds succeeded during the first year. “Good Mr. Jordan,” as he was styled, had ample employment in fulfilling the requests of his precise and inquisitive friend, which did not cease till the edition of Shakspeare had appeared. In return, the hints of pecuniary distress and a “family,” already quoted, were not forgotten. Malone gave him good Christian advice, and added a more substantial soother of uneasiness in a note for forty pounds raised among his friends in London. Nor did his kindness cease there. Occasional correspondence continued; and a small post in the Excise was procured him, but being over age he proved to be ineligible for the place.[1]
- ↑ Our critic, and other prosaic people, had been zealously at work in attempting to discover earthly facts of the Poet’s life. But inquirers of another order aimed to ascertain how the heavens were affected at the moment of his birth. Such a genius could scarcely arise, thought astrological pundits, without the stars having some hand in it, as the reader may be amused to hear:—
“By the amazing intellectual faculties,” says Mr. John Bolton to the Shakspeare Club at Stratford in 1829, “and surprising, as well as unexampled depth of genius of the immortal Bard, as well as his poetic powers, retentive memory and other mental gifts, which have, like the refulgent Sun, shone far and near, and victoriously surmounted the mightiest efforts of all other dramatic writers. These most astonishing powers are well denoted by the Moon, Mercury, and Mars being in cardinal signs; by the opposition of the Moon and Mercury; the trine of the Moon and Venus; the
