the Poet was getting on at the age of forty. Such details of business
may not seem very appropriate in a _Life_ of the greatest of poets;
but we have clear evidence that he took a lively interest in them, and
was a good hand at managing them. He had learned by experience, no
doubt, that "money is a good soldier, and will on"; and that "if
money go before, all ways do lie open." And the thing carries this
benefit, if no other, that it tells us a man may be something of a
poet without being either above or below the common affairs of life.

A pretty careful investigation of the matter has brought good judges
to the conclusion, that in 1608 the Poet's income could not have been
less than £400 a year. This, for all practical purposes, would be
equivalent to some $12,000 in our time. The Rev. John Ward, who became
vicar of Stratford in 1662, noted in his _Diary_, that Shakespeare,
after his retirement, "had an allowance so large that he spent at the
rate of £1,000 a year, as I have heard." The honest and cautious man
did well to add, "as I have heard." That the Poet kept up a liberal
establishment, and was fond of entertaining his neighbours, and still
more his old associates, we can well believe; but that he had £1,000 a
year to spend, or would have spent it if he had, is not credible.

Some question has been made whether Shakespeare was a member of the
celebrated convivial club established by Sir Walter Raleigh, and which
held its meetings at the Mermaid tavern. We have nothing that directly
certifies his membership of that choice institution; but there are
several things inferring it so strongly as to leave no reasonable
doubt on the subject. His conversations certainly ran in that circle
of wits some of whom are directly known to have belonged to it; and
among them all there is not one whose then acknowledged merits gave
him a better title to its privileges. It does not indeed necessarily