The Sun.
London, England, 1828-04-11 00:00:00

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;: JVI;, IDAVENAN"r. ,01", .
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(From the Companion.) ) '
Was Davenant the-Natural Son of Shakspeare ?
This poet, who united in a more than ordi-
nary degree the active with the contemplative
life, and went through a greater number of ad
ventures than falls to the lot of most of hi.
brethren, was burn at Oxford, in February, 1605,
and was the son of John Davenant, a citizen of
repute, who kept au inn or tavern in that city.
The biographers have not noticed the deduction;
but as he had a brother who became chaplain to
Bishop Davenant, it is not unlikely that the fa-
mily were of the same ancient stock of the Da-
venants of Sible Heningham and Davenant's
lands, in Essex. Wit and scandal, however,
have interfeted to give him a profaner genealogy.
Shakspeare, it stems, used to put up at Mr.
Davenant's house,, in hie iournies between Strat-
ford and London ; and Mr. Davenant being a
very grave personage, though fond of the drama,
and Mrs. Datenant, on the other hand, being
equally lively and beautiful, and a woman of
good wit and conversation, it has been conjec-
tured that Sir William had more reasons for the

talents that were in him than the honest vintner
had warrant for laying claim to. A story is re-
lated of little Davenanee being met in the streets
of Oxford by an acquaintance, who, asking hint
where he was going in such a hurry, was told,
44 To see my godfather Shakspeare ;" upon which
the other advised him to be cautious how he
took the name of God in vain.
Biographers have very properly called for
proofs
shoi sillustriousmuch
choreason,
pies h
of gossip, Some
a
ve found a refuta-
tion of it in the manners of the time, and the
opinions of the great poet of nature
with
not of t
What the manners of the time were, at least in
those quarters where license is usually to be
found, the memoirs both of court and stage suf-
ficiently inform us, and without entering any
deeper into the question as to Shakspeare s opi-
nions, there is no reason to ;sot:elude, from what
he has left us of them, that strei; a eireU-Mstarice
would have been absolutely impossible. Thomas
Warton was inclined to believe it. Stevens
treated the report with contempt, and alleged
that Davenant's face was unworthy of such
is
father : a strange argument ! especially as Sit'
William, before a misadventure had happened to
him, is stated to have been very handsomer--
Aubrey, who was conversant with him, says uk
his son Charles Davenant, that he inherited
" his father's beauty."
On the other hand, the beauty (to say nothing
of our ignorance whether Shakspeare was hand-
some or not), may have come from the mother
the sage Mr. John Davenant might have SUP-
plied the graver part of his son's genius ; or he
might have been as dull as Sir John Suckling':;
father is said to have been, and the boy have
been clever, nevertheless. Besides, wit must
begin with somebody. We are not to suppose
that a race has been facetious ever since the
Decline'and Fall.
The truth seems to 1.T., that all the surmises
on this subject originated with Davenant him-
self. Wood,' who first published them, had
them from Aubrey ; and Aubrey had them from
Davenant. " Sir Williams," says he, " would
sometimes, when he was pleasant over a glass of
wine with his most intimate friends—e. g. Sam.
Butler (author of ' Hudibras'), &c. say, that it
seemed to him that he writ with the very spirit
that Shakspeare did, and seemed contented
enough to be thought his son." Sir William
hit upon the best argument to be found.—
It is certainly a curious coincidence, that the
cast of his genius resembles a good deal
what we might conceive of a minor Shakspeare.
There is the same propensity to be dramatic
—the same incessant activity of thought
—and, consequent upon both, the same unfitness);
for narrative. Gondibert looks quite as much
the son of Venus and Adonis, as Davenant hire -
self' might have been of Shakspeare and his Ox-
ford beauty. His disposition too resembled
Shakspeare s, in its romantic turn for friendship,
He had the same wish to see fair play between
things of good and ill report in this' world, as
may be observed by what he says in Gondibert
of the art of war ; he evinced the same sympathy
with human nature in the individual, mixed with
contempt for the populace as a body politic ;
and though he was liberal in matters of religion
to a degree of scepticism (of more than which
Shakspeare and his fellows were accused in their
times), he went beyond him in sheaving that same
inclination towards an imaginative and deserted
faith, which the studiers of Shakspeare have
thought they discerned in his gentle treatment of
friars and the cloister. But all this, being a
r mixture of the lively and melancholy, might have
been produced by a proper conjunction Df the
Saturn and Venus of the Oxford inn. ShakE-
)
peace himself had not Shakspeares only for his
progenitors.

A new bed of oysters has been discovered 011.
this port. Several vessels have arrived for the purpose nt
fishing, from Grimsby, Blakeney, Colchester, &c., to
which places large numbers of oysters are annually con-
veyed from hence.—Brighton Gazette.
FATAL EFFECTS OF DESPAIReMiss ANY:
HAMERTON, a milliner and dress-maker, of Albion-street.
in this town, was charged a short time ago before our Ma-
gistrates with robbing ANN DAVIS, a lodger residing in
her house. She asserted her innocence, and made a coun
tercharge against ANN Davis for having falsely accused
her, for which the latter was committed to Northlea.ch
House of Correction. Subsequent information, howevet
induced our police to apprehend Miss Mama:row again,
e
when she gave bail to appear to any charge that Sh mightwas be
brought against her by her old lodger.
tried on Tuesday last at the Gloucester Lent Assizes
of considerable beauty, and for the robbery, found guilty, and sentenced to seven years'
naatmt ehde
time.
mo
es s.
transportation. During the trial she strongly protested
her innocence, but in vain; and after judgment WS* pro-
pounced, she was taken to the county gaol, where she
hung herself during the night. The deceased was an in-
teresting younghanekwdoNinvaans
sitting 9
deceased was an inhabitant a the vil-
lage
we have forgotten,
liici:loe on the morning of the accident, havisig
re-
spEtably connected.—Cheltenham Paper,
before the door of Ma hut,
EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE.—A man
met his death
on Wednesday last, under the following uncommon cir-
cumstancecaste,aaiabggoe:mo fb,evccyh:,::::. ER.::man of the same
of the Chucknleerarcahsitem,
happened to peso
by with another game cock under his arm, and seeing
that of the deceased, challenged D
OSSERRI to a cock fight;
the challenge was
accepted, the spurs (or rather the small
country blades serving to the same purpose), were affixed
to the legs of the feathered champions, and the battle began
that the
; after a short period, DOSSERRI perceiving
the spur belonging to his bird had slipped awry,
took him up, and was in the act of adjusting the instru-
ment, when the animal, which for that purpose he held
incautiously in his lap, made a desperate struggle to get
free from his hold, and in so doing, plunged the weapon
with such force into the thigh of the unfortunate man, ~,
to sever the femoral artery; of which woun l the pool
wretch literally bled to death in about two hours afterwards,
witho it any application for medical assistance having been
inasle, or even judged necessary by his neighbours, who ap-
plied some powdered charcoal to the orifice, and bound up
th,u thigh, without entertaining the
.remotest apprehension
of its late, termination. The Coroner with commendable
pro aptitude held an inquest on the body, and the Jury de-
livere I a verdict of " Accidental Death," the evidence being
so clear as to defy suipicion,.-3fadras Gazette.