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Ten in the hundred lies here ingrav’d,
‘Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav’d:
If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?
Oh! ho! quoth the devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.

But the sharpness of the Satyr is said to have stung the man so severely, that he never forgave it.

He dy’d in the 53d year of his age, and was bury’d on the north side of the chancel, in the great church at Stratford, where a monument, as engrav’d in the plate, is plac’d in the wall. On his Grave-stone underneath is,

Good friend, for Jesus sake, forbear
To dig the dust inclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

He had three daughters, of which two liv’d to be marry’d; Judith, the elder, to one Mr. Thomas Quiney, by whom she had three Sons, who all dy’d without children; and Susannah, who was his favourite, to Dr. John Hall, a physician of good reputation in that country. She left one child only, a daughter, who was marry’d first to Thomas Nash, Esq; and afterwards to Sir John Bernard of Abington, but dy’d likewise without issue.

This is what I could learn of any note, either relating to himself or family: The character of the man is best seen in his writings. But since Ben Johnson has made a sort of an essay towards it in his Discoveries, tho’, as I have before hinted, he was not very cordial in his friendship, I will venture to give it in his words.

“I remember the Players have often mention’d it as an honour to Shakespear, that in writing (whatsoever he penn’d) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand, which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted: And to justifie mine own candor (for I lov’d the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any). He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flow’d with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopp’d: Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power, would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him,

Caesar
thou dost me wrong.

He reply’d:

Caesar
did never wrong, but with just cause.

and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeem’d his vices with his virtues: There was ever more in him to be prais’d than to be pardon’d.”

As for the passage which he mentions out of Shakespear, there is somewhat like it in Julius Caesar, but without the absurdity; nor did I ever meet with it in any edition that I have seen, as quoted by Mr. Johnson. Besides his plays in this edition, there are two or three ascrib’d to him by Mr. Langbain, which I have never seen, and know nothing of. He writ likewise, Venus and Adonis, and Tarquin and Lucrece, in stanza’s, which have been printed in a late collection of Poems. As to the character given of him by Ben Johnson, there is a good deal true in it: But I believe it may be as well express’d by what Horace says of the first Romans, who wrote Tragedy upon the Greek models (or indeed translated ’em), in his epistle to Augustus.