MOSES MARGOLIOUTH.
[5] The writer was anxious to obtain some information respecting that curious relic from the inhabitants of the place: he was induced, therefore, to address a note of query to the present resident, of the house in question, Mr. G. C. Hague; but the following was the extent of the reply received:—"All I know of the sun-dial is this: It is told that a Jew, who was a mason, and assisted in putting up the front of Wentworth House, the mansion of the Earl Fitzwilliam, made the thing, and put it up during his leisure hours. This is all that I ever learned about it. I should be greatly obliged to you If you would inform me what the translation of the Hebrew characters is.—I am, Sir, yours, &c.
"G. C. HAGUE."
VALUE OF SHAKSPEARE'S LEAGUE.—MEANING OF SHIP.—LOG-SHIP.
So universal was Shakspeare's knowledge even of the arcana of other men's pursuits, that his commentators, in their anxiety to reduce his attainments to an ordinary standard, have attributed to him a sort of ubiquitous apprenticeship to all manner of trades and callings,—now a butcher,—now an attorney's clerk,—now a schoolmaster,—and anon a holder of horses at the theatre door, where doubtless he acquired that farrier-knowledge so profusely lavished upon Petruchio's charger in The Taming of the Shrew. Dr. Farmer, amongst other atrocities which have earned for him an unenviable immortality in connexion with Shakspeare's name, had the incredible folly to recognise, in the splendid image—
"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will,"
an allusion to skewer making! in which the rough-hewing was Shakspeare's, while his more skilful sire shaped the ends! Even Dr. Johnson cried "shop" at that passage of The Winter's Tale where Perdita, fearing lest Florizel's father might discover him "obscured with a swain's wearing," exclaims—
"How would he look to see his work so noble
Vilely bound up."
Whereupon the great critic utters this sapient apothegm, "It is impossible for any man to rid his mind of his profession"—meaning of course Shakspeare's profession of book making!