sore back. This at once stopped my journey
along the high ridge of Lebanon, and obliged
me to turn my face homewards.

MR. W. SHAKESPEARE, SOLICITOR.

MY own private belief is that W. Shakespeare
was a hydropathic doctor, as I mean to prove
from his works, and display to the world in a
work of considerable magnitude that has been
lately sent to press. In the mean time I
interest myself about the opinions of others,
and have just been buying two new publications
on the subject of our mutual friend.
One is by a clergyman, M.A. of Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge, and displays
from Shakespeare's works " the vastness of
his Bible lore." The other is by an able
lawyer, who believes that Shakespeare was a
man of his own cloth, and that, if not actually
in practice as an attorney, he was a man who
could have passed a stiff examination in the
common, criminal, and statute law. I, myself,
being a hydropathist, declare that if he were
living now, and paid me a sufficient sum for
the good will, I should feel more than confidence
in entrusting to him my establishment,
and making it Shakespeare late Slush, in
Brash House, Drenchmore. I need hardly
observe that the very first play in our friend's
works, the Tempest, is the story of a great
water-cure worked in an exceedingly bad
case by one Prospero, and we all know
how much in another play the very soul of
the Duke of Clarence was benefited by the
bare dreaming about a cold water bath. What
a fine knowledge of the efficacy of a cold
douche in the excitement of mania is
expressed in Lear's request, made instinctively
to the descending flood of rain—as dogs
when sick instinctively apply themselves to
certain grasses—"Pour on, I will endure!"
Undoubtedly the unfortunate gentleman who
showed this knowledge of what was proper
to his case, would be represented on the stage
by any really subtle actor as placing his head
carefully under the drip from the roof of the
hovel, in order that he might the better
secure a sustained stream upon the occiput.
Compare with this Shakespeare's perception
of malpractice in another case of madness,
that of Ophelia, who, instead of receiving
trickle on her head, died of complete submersion.
"Too much of water hadst thou, poor
Ophelia." Even I myself couldn't have drawn
the distinction with more accuracy. Then
there is the well-known application of a
water-cure to the distemper of Sir John
Falstaff, with temporary good effect, though
this disease was at last only subdued by acupuncture.
How clearly, at the same time, is
it shown to us that all the gross humours
and troubles of Falstaff arose from his not
having been a water-drinker! Observe, too, the
special mention made in the play of Coriolanus
of the Publius and Quintus: "That
our best water brought by conduits hither."
Would the poet make a Roman publish or
acquaint us with such matters as that, if he
had not thought qualities of water a great
matter that might fitly be alluded to in a
heroic play? Truly he was an epicure in
water, who could talk as our friend does, in
his Timon, of " the cold brook candied with
ice." Crusted would have been the cross
word of an unbelieving man, but candied was
the sweet word of a true believer, and of one
who could wish to recommend the thing
candidly, in honey phrase, to candidates for
dip and drink, say at Brash House, in Drenchmore.

I am not forestalling my book, for it is
a thick one. I have but sprinkled you
with a few beads out of a tremendous waterspout.

No; what forestals me is the boldness of
men who are now setting Shakespeare up as
a Divine and an Attorney. He is the
Divine Attorney, forsooth. Let these gentlemen
fling away ambition.

By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his maker, hope to win by 't?

Observe here, by the by, suggests the M.A.
the vastness of Shakespeare's acquaintance
with the first chapter of Genesis.

Constance says in King John, " For since
the birth of Cain, the first male child——"
Now look at that! The astounding poet had
read all about Cain! But what is the
profundity of Shakespeare to the profundity of
the M.A.? Was ever before any mortal so
acute as the M.A. is in this comment on
Macbeth?—

ACT II. SCENE 3.
[Enter a Porter.]
PORTER. Here's a knocking, indeed! If a man
were porter of Hell-gate, he should have old turning
the key. Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' the
name of Belzebub?
[Belzebub] Shakespeare is indebted for this word to
the New Testament; in the present instance, perhaps,
without being aware of it, or at least without a thought
of detection, from 11th chapter of St. Luke:
Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
To him that knocketh, it shall be opened.
He casteth out devils through Beelzebub.
                                                       (9, 10, 15.)
That the words knock and Beelzebub should be
found in the llth chapter of Luke, thus near each
other, and should be thus connected by Shakespeare,
is too strange to escape notice.

And yet Shakespeare borrowed that porter's
cursing from the Gospel of Saint Luke,
"without a thought of detection." Was there
in his day no M.A. of four C's to force the
secrets of his text and knock down any hope
of a successful plagiarism? Shylock,
happening to swear, like a good Jew as he is, by
Jacob's staff: " By a word," says the M.A. of
C. C. C. C., emphatic with italics, "by a
word sometimes Shakespeare shows how
thoroughly he must have read the Bible.
Jacob mentions his staff in the tenth verse of