King John, Act iv.  Sc. 3.

A memory, too, of the profuse adornment with which he had been called upon to decorate some very tender youth’s or miss’s fashionable suit intrudes itself even in his most thoughtful tragedy:—­

  “The canker galls the infants of the Spring
  Too oft before their buttons be disclos’d.”

  Hamlet, Act i.  Sc. 3.

In “Macbeth,” desiring to pay the highest compliment to Macduff’s judgment and knowledge, he makes Lennox say,—­

  “He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows
  The fits of the season.”—­Act iv.  Sc. 2.

Not the last fall or last spring style, be it observed, but that of the season, which it is most necessary for the fashionable tailor to know.  In writing the first scene of the “Second Part of Henry IV.,” his mind was evidently crossed by the shade of some over-particular dandy, whose fastidious nicety as to the set of his garments he had failed to satisfy; for he makes Northumberland compare himself to a man who,

  “Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire
  Out of his keeper’s arms.”

And yet we must not rely too much even upon evidence so strong and so cumulative as this.  For it would seem as if Shakespeare must have been a publisher, and have known the anxiety attendant upon the delay of an author not in high health to complete a work the first part of which has been put into the printer’s hands.  Else, how are we to account for his feeling use of this beautiful metaphor in “Twelfth Night”?

  “Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive,
  If you will lead these graces to the grave,
  And leave the world no copy.”

  Act i.  Sc. 5.

But this part of our subject expands before us, and we must stay our hand.  We merely offer these hints as our modest contribution to the attempts to decide from phrases used in Shakespeare’s works what were his avocations before he became a playwright, and return to Lord Campbell and Mr. Rushton.

When Malone, in 1790, broached his theory, that Shakespeare had been an attorney’s clerk, he cited in support of it twenty-four passages.  Mr. Rushton’s pamphlet brings forward ninety-five, more or less; Lord Campbell’s book, one hundred and sixty.  But, from what he has seen of it, the reader will not be surprised at learning that a large number of the passages cited by his Lordship must be thrown aside, as having no bearing whatever on the question of Shakespeare’s legal acquirements.  They evince no more legal knowledge, no greater familiarity with legal phraseology, than is apparent in the ordinary conversation of intelligent people generally, even at this day.  Mr. Rushton, more systematic than his Lordship, has been also more careful; and from the pages of both we suppose that there might be selected a round hundred of phrases which could be fairly considered as having been used by Shakespeare with a consciousness of their original