——­His losses
  That have of late so huddled on his back,
  Enough to press a royal merchant down.

We are not to imagine the word royal to be a random sounding epithet.  It is used with great propriety by the poet, and designed to shew him well acquainted with the history of the people, whom he here brings upon the stage.  For when the French and Venetians in the beginning of the thirteenth century, had won Constantinople, the French under the Emperor Henry endeavoured to extend their conquests, in the provinces of the Grecian empire on the Terra firma, while the Venetians being masters of the sea, gave liberty to any subject of the Republic, who would fit out vessels to make themselves masters of the isles of the Archipelago and other maritime places, to enjoy their conquests in sovereignty, only doing homage to the Republic for their several principalities.  In pursuance of this licence the Sanudo’s, the Justiniani, the Grimaldi, the Summaripa’s, and others, all Venetian merchants, erected principalities in the several places of the Archipelago, and thereby became truly, and properly Royal Merchants.

But there are several places which one cannot forbear thinking a translation from classic writers.

In the Tempest Act V. Scene ii.  Prospero says,

--------I have------
Called forth the mutinous winds
And ’twixt the green sea, and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread ratling thunder,
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak,
With his own bolt; the strong bas’d promontory,
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluckt up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, op’d and let them forth
By my so potent art.

So Medea in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,

  Stantia concutio cantu freta; nubila pello,
  Nubilaque induco, ventos abigoque, vocoque;
  Vivaque faxa sua convulsaque robora terra
  Et sylvas moveo; jubeoque tremiscere montes,
  Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchris.

But to return to the incidents of his life:  Upon his quitting the grammar school, he seems, to have entirely devoted himself to that way of living which his father proposed, and in order to settle in the world after a family manner, thought fit to marry while he was yet very young.  His wife was the daughter of one Hatchway, said to have been a substantial Yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford.  In this kind of domestic obscurity he continued for some time, till by an unhappy instance of misconduct, he was obliged to quit the place of his nativity, and take shelter in London, which luckily proved the occasion of displaying one of the greatest genius’s that ever was known in dramatic poetry.  He had the misfortune to fall into ill company:  Among these were some who made a frequent practice of Deer-stealing, and who engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot near Stratford; for which he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought