Note (return) — Replies.

I am quite unconscious of any purport in my remarks, other than they appear on paper; and I should be sorry indeed to accuse Mr. Singer of being "ignorant" of anything; but I venture to suggest that those young gentlemen of surpassing spirit, who ate crocodiles, drank UP eisell, and committed other anomalies against nature in honor of their mistresses, belonged decidedly to a period of time anterior to that of Shakspeare, and went quite out with the age of chivalry, of which Shakspeare saw scarcely even the fag end. Your lover of Shakspeare's time was quite another animal. He had begun to take beer. He had become much more subtle and self-satisfied. He did sometimes pen sonnets to his mistress's eye-brow, and sing soft nothings to the gentle sighing of his "Lewte." He sometimes indeed looked "pale and wan;" but, rather than for love, it was more than probably from his immoderate indulgence in the "newe weede," which he drank[9], though I never discovered that it was drank up by him. He generally wore a doublet and breeches of satin, slashed and lined with coloured taffata; and walked about with a gilliflower in one hand, and his gloves in the other. His veritable portrait is extant, and is engraved in Mr. Knight's Pictorial Shakspeare.[10]