is irresolution, there is imbecility. But Sir Magnus has no
knowledge, and no respect for it. Sir Thomas would almost go thirty
miles, even to Oxford, to see a fine specimen of it, although, like
most of those who call themselves the godly, he entertains the most
undoubting belief that he is competent to correct the errors of the
wisest and most practised theologian.



EDITOR'S APOLOGY.



A part only of the many deficiencies which the reader will discover
in this book is attributable to the Editor. These, however, it is
his duty to account for, and he will do it as briefly as he can.

The fac-similes (as printers' boys call them, meaning specimens) of
the handwriting of nearly all the persons introduced, might perhaps
have been procured had sufficient time been allowed for another
journey into Warwickshire. That of Shakspeare is known already in
the signature to his will, but deformed by sickness; that of Sir
Thomas Lucy is extant at the bottom of a commitment of a female
vagrant, for having a sucking child in her arms on the public road;
that of Silas Gough is affixed to the register of births and
marriages, during several years, in the parishes of Hampton Lucy and
Charlecote, and certifies one death,--Euseby Treen's; surmised, at
least, to be his by the letters "E. T." cut on a bench seven inches
thick, under an old pollard-oak outside the park paling of
Charlecote, toward the northeast. For this discovery the Editor is