S H A

565

S H A

noted for Iiis wealth and usury. In a conversation one day Mr. ]Combe told Shakspeare that he supposed if he outlived him hewould write his epitaph, and since he could not tell what might besaid of him he desired it might be done immediately, on whichour poet produced these lines:

Ten in the hundred lies here ingrav’d,

’Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav’d ;

If any man ask, who lies in this tomb ?

Oh 1 oh! quoth the devil, ’tis my own John-a-Combe.

But the sharpness of the satire so stung the man that he never for-gave it. In the beginning of 1610, he made his will, wherein hetestified his respect to his quondam partners in the theatre: lieappointed his youngest daughter, jointly with her husband, hisexecutors, and bequeathed to them the best part of his estate,which they came into the possession of not long after. He diedon the 23d of April following, being in the 53d year of his age ; andwas interred among his ancestors on the north side of the chancel,in the great church of Stratford, where there is a handsome monu-ment erected for him, inscribed with the following elegiac distichin Latin :

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronern,

Terra tegit, Populus ma;ret, Olympus babet.

The character of Shakspeare as a dramatic writer has been oftendrawn, but perhaps never with more accuracy than by Dr. John-son : “ Shakspeare (says he) is above all writers, at least above allmodern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to hisreaders a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His charactersare not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractisedby the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or profes-sions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the ac-cidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are thegenuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will al-ways supply, and observation will always find. His persons actand speak by the influence of those general passions and principlesby which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life iscontinued in motion. In the writings of other poets, a characteris too often an individual; in those of Shakspeare, it is commonlya species. It is from this wide extension of design that so muchinstruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakspearewith practical axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of Euri-ides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said ofhakspeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civiland economical prudence. Yet his real power is not shewn inthe splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of hisfable, and the tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries to recom-mend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant inHierocles , who, when he oflfered his house to sale, carried a brickm his pocket as a specimen. Upon every other stage the univer-sal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed,and every action quickened or retarded. But love is only one ofmany passions; and as it has no great influence upon the sum ofpfe, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet who caught hisideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw be-fore him. He knew that any other passion, as it was regular orexorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity. Characters thusa mple and general were not easily discriminated and preserved ;yet perhaps no poet ever kept his personages more distinct fromeach other. Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyper-bolical or aggravated characters, by fabulous and unexampledexcellence or depravity, as the writers of barbarous romances in-'igorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf; and he that should°rm his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from thea * e > would be equally deceived. Shakspeare has no heroes; his*eenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as (he readermnks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the sameoccasion: even where the agency is supernatural, the dialogue isevel with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passionsth i' 10St f | ' ( ' t l uc nt incidents; so that-he who contemplates them inhook will not know them in the world : Shakspeare approxi-mates (he remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; (lie eventeff t ' le ^presents will not happen, but if it were possible, itsSa -j C ‘ s Wou 'd probably be such as he has assigned ; and it may be. that he has not only shewn human nature as it acts in realVOL, iv._ N o. 195,

exigencies, but as it would be found in trials to which it cannot beexposed.”

SHALLOP, or SLOOP, a small light vessel, with only a smallmain-mast, and fore-mast, and lug-sails, to hale up, and let down,on occasion. Shallops are commonly good sailors, and are there-fore often used as tenders upon men of war.

SHALLOT, or ESCHALOT. See Allium .

SHAMANS , wizards or conjurers, in high repute among seve-ral idolatrous nations inhabiting different parts of Russia .

SHAMBLES, among miners, a sort of niches or landing-places,left at such distances in the adits of the mines, that the shovel-menmay conveniently throw up the ore from shamble to shamble, tillit comes to the top of the mine.

SHAMMY, SHAMOIS, or CHAMOIS, in commerce, akind of leather, either dressed in oil or tanned, much esteemed forits softness, pliancy, &c. It is prepared from the skin of the cha-mois, or shamois, a kind of rupicapra, or wild goat, called alsofisard. The dressing is performed in the following manner: Theskins, being washed, drained, and smeared over with quicklimeon the fleshy side, are folded in two lengthwise, the wool out-wards, and laid on heaps, and so left to ferment eight days, or, ifthey had been left to dry after flaying, then fifteen days. Thenthey' are washed out, drained, and half dried; laid on a woodenleg, or horse, the wool stripped off with a round staff for that pur-pose, and laid in a weak pit, the lime whereof had been used be-fore, and has lost the greatest part of its force. After 24 hoursthey are taken out, and left to drain 24 more ; they are then putin another stronger pit. This done, they are taken out, drained,and put in again, by turns; which begins to dispose them to takeoil; and this practice they continue for six weeks in summer, orthree months in winter; at the end whereof they are washed out,laid on the wooden leg, and the surface of the skin on the wool-side peeled off, to render them the softer; then made into par-cels, steeped a night in the river, in winter more, stretched six orseven over one another on the wooden leg, and the knife passedstrongly on the flesh-side, to take off any thing superfluous, andrender the skin smooth. Then they are steeped, as before, in theriver, and the same operation is repeated on the wool-side; theyare then thrown into a tub of water, with bran in it, which is brew-ed among the skins till the greatest part sticks to them, and thenseparated into distinct tubs, till they swell, and rise of themselvesabove the water. By this means the remains of the lime are clear-ed out; they are then wrung out, hung up to dry on ropes, andsent to the mill, with the quantity of oil necessary to scour them:the best oil is that of stock-fish. Here they are first thrown inbundles into the river for twelve hours, then laid in the mill-trough, and lulled without oil till they be well softened ; thenoiled with the hand, one by one, and thus formed into parcels offour skins each; which are milled and dried on cords a secondtime; then a third; and then oiled again, and dried. This pro-cess is repeated as often as necessary ; when done, if there be anymoisture remaining, they are dried in a stove, and made up intoparcels wrapped up in wool; after some time they are opened tothe air, but wrapped up again as before, till such time as the oilseems to have lost all its force, which it ordinarily does in 24 hours..The skins are then returned from the mill to the chamoiser to bescoured: which is done by putting them in a lixivium of wood-ashes, working and beating them in it with poles, and leaving themto steep till the ley hath had its effect; then they are wrung out,steeped in another lixivium, wrung again ; and this is repeated tillall the grease and oil be purged out. When this is done, they arehalf dried, and passed over a sharp edged iron-instrument, placedperpendicular in a block, which opens, softens, and makes themgentle. Lastly, they are thoroughly dried, .and passed over thesame instrument again ; which finishes-the preparation, and leavesthem in form of shammy. Kid and goat-skins are sharooised inthe same manner as those of sheep, excepting that the hair is takenoff without the use of any lime; and that when brought from themill they undergo a particular preparation called ramalling, themost delicate and difficult of all the others. It consists in this,that, as soon as brought from, the mill, they are steeped in a fitlixivium, taken out, stretched on a round wooden leg, and the- hairis scraped off with the knife; this makes them smooth, and'inworking to cast a kind of fine knap. The difficulty is in scrapingthem evenly.

SHANE*