"the spectacles of
books." This notion has vitiated a good deal of Shakespearian
criticism. Rowe had something of it. "Art," says he, "had so little,
and Nature so large a share in what Shakespeare did, that, for aught I
know, the performances of his youth were the best." I think decidedly
otherwise; and have grounds for doing so which Rowe had not, in what
has since been done towards ascertaining the chronology of the Poet's
plays.

It would seem from Chettle's apology, that Shakespeare was already
beginning to attract liberal notice from that circle of brave and
accomplished gentlemen which adorned the state of Queen Elisabeth.
Among the "divers of worship," first and foremost stood, no doubt, the
high-souled, the generous Southampton, then in his twentieth year.
Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton, was but eight years
old when his father died: the Southampton estates were large; during
the young Earl's minority his interests were in good hands, and the
revenues accumulated; so that on coming of age he had means answerable
to his dispositions. Moreover, he was a young man of good parts, of
studious habits, of cultivated tastes, and withal of a highly
chivalrous and romantic spirit: to all which he added the honour of
being the early and munificent patron of Shakespeare. In 1593, the
Poet published his _Venus and Adonis_, with a modest and manly
dedication to this nobleman, very different from the usual high-flown
style of literary adulation then in vogue; telling him, "If your
Honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to
take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some
graver labour." In the dedication, he calls the poem "the first heir
of my invention." Whether he dated its birth from the writing or the
publishing, does not appear: probably it had been written some time;
possibly before he left Stratford. This was followed, the next year,
by his _Lucrece_, dedicated to the same nobleman in a strain of more
open and assured friendship: "The warrant I have of your honourable
disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of
acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours."

It was probably about this time that the event took place which Rowe
heard of through Sir William Davenant, that Southampton at one time
gave the Poet a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a
purchase which he knew him to be desirous of mak