Produced by Robert Prince, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
The "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," and "Suspiria De
Profundis," form the first volume of this series of Mr. De
Quincey's Writings. A third volume will shortly be issued,
containing some of his most interesting papers contributed to the
English magazines.
Author of "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," Etc. Etc.
SHAKSPEARE.
[Endnote: 1]
William Shakspeare, the protagonist on the great arena of modernpoetry, and the glory of the human intellect, was born atStratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, in the year 1564,and upon some day, not precisely ascertained, in the month ofApril. It is certain that he was baptized on the 25th; and fromthat fact, combined with some shadow of a tradition, Malone hasinferred that he was born on the 23d. There is doubtless, on theone hand, no absolute necessity deducible from law or custom, aseither operated in those times, which obliges us to adopt such aconclusion; for children might be baptized, and were baptized, atvarious distances from their birth: yet, on the other hand, the 23dis as likely to have been the day as any other; and more likelythan any earlier day, upon two arguments. First, because there wasprobably a tradition floating in the seventeenth century, thatShakspeare died upon his birthday: now it is beyond a doubt that hedied upon the 23d of April.
Secondly, because it is a reasonable presumption, that no parents,living in a simple community, tenderly alive to the pieties ofhousehold duty, and in an age still clinging reverentially to theceremonial ordinances of religion, would much delay the adoption oftheir child into the great family of Christ. Considering theextreme frailty of an infant's life during its two earliest years,to delay would often be to disinherit the child of its Christianprivileges; privileges not the less eloquent to the feelings frombeing profoundly mysterious, and, in the English church, forced notonly upon the attention, but even upon the eye of the mostthoughtless. According to the discipline of the English church, theunbaptized are buried with "maimed rites," shorn of theirobsequies, and sternly denied that "sweet and solemn farewell," bywhich otherwise the church expresses her final charity with allmen; and not only so, but they are even locally separatedand sequestrated. Ground the most hallowed, and populous withChristian burials of households,
"That died in peace with one another.
Father, sister, son, and brother,"
opens to receive the vilest malefactor; by which the churchsymbolically expresses her maternal willingness to gather back intoher fold those even of her flock who have strayed from her by themost memorable aberrations; and yet, with all this indulgence, shebanishes to unhallowed ground the innocent bodies of theunbaptized. To them and to suicides she turns a face of wrath. Withthis gloomy fact offered to the very external senses, it isdifficult to suppose that any parents would risk their ownreproaches, by putting the fulfilment of so grave a duty on thehazard of a convulsion fit. The case of royal children isdifferent; their baptisms, it is true, were often delayed for weeksbut the household chaplains of the palace were always at hand,night and day, to baptize them in the very agonies of death.[Endnote: 3] We m