are not engaged in war, the possessors of parks were continually under the necessity of defending them against invasions, which, in places so open and unprotected, were as frequent as they were easy. Danger does not always diminish temptation, but frequently even makes it appear less illegitimate. A band of poachers carried on their depredations in the neighborhood of Stratford, and Shakspeare, who was eminently sociable, never refused to engage in any thing that was done in common. He was caught in the park of Sir Thomas Lucy, locked up in the keeper’s lodge, where he passed the night in no very agreeable manner, and taken the next morning before Sir Thomas, in whose presence, according to all appearance, he did not extenuate his fault by submission and repentance. Shakspeare seems to have retained too merry a recollection of this circumstance of his life for us to suppose that it caused him any thing more than amusement. Sir Thomas Lucy, whom he brought on the stage some years afterward as Justice Shallow, had doubtless taken hold of his imagination less as an object of ill humor than as a pleasant caricature. Whether, in their interview, Shakspeare exercised the vivacity of his wit at the expense of his powerful adversary, and consoled himself by his success for his ill luck, or whether he enjoyed the scene with that mocking pride which is so amusing to the person who displays it, and so offensive to him who has to submit to it, we do not know, but such a supposition is in itself very probable; and the scene in the “Second Part of Henry IV.,” in which Falstaff treats with witty insolence Justice Shallow, who threatens to prosecute him for just such an offense, evidently conveys to us some of the repartees of the young poacher. They were not intended, and could not have availed, to mollify the resentment of Sir Thomas. In
