that amazing work is brought somewhat nearer the summit of perfection," begins with correcting a blunder in the fourth Book, v. 540:

The setting sun

"Slowly descended, and with right aspect-
"Levell❜d his evening rays.-

Not so in the new version:

"Meanwhile the setting sun descending slow-
"Level'd with aspect right his ev'ning rays."

Enough of such commentators.'-The celebrated Dr. Dee had a spirit, who would sometimes condescend to correct him, when peccant in quantity: and "it had been kind of him to have a little assisted the wights abovementioned.-Milton affected the antique; but it may seem more extraordinary, that the old accent should be adopted in Hudibras.

After all, The Double Falshood is superior to Theobald. One passage, and one only in the whole play, he pretended to have written:

Strike up, my masters;

"But touch the strings with a religious softness:

"Teach sound to languish through the night's dull ear, "Till melancholy start from her lazy couch,

"And carelessness grow convert to attention."

These lines were particularly admired; and his vanity could not resist the opportunity of claiming them: but his claim had been more easily allowed Ito any other part of the performance.

See also a wrong accentuation of the word aspect in Mr. Ireland's unmetrical, ungrammatical, harum-scarum Vortigern, which was damned at Drury Lane theatre, April 1796-the performance of a madman without a lucid interval.

To whom then shall we ascribe it?-Somebody hath told us, who should seem to be a nostrummonger by his argument, that, let accents be how they will, it is called an original play of William Shakspeare in the King's Patent prefixed to Mr. Theobald's edition, 1728, and consequently there could be no fraud in the matter. Whilst, on the contrary, the Irish laureat, Mr. Victor, remarks, (and were it true, it would certainly be decisive) that the plot is borrowed from a novel of Cervantes, not published till the year after Shakspeare's death. But unluckily the same novel appears in a part of Don Quixote, which was printed in Spanish, 1605, and in English by Shelton, 1612.-The same reasoning however, which exculpated our author from The Yorkshire Tragedy, may be applied on the pre

sent occasion.

But you want my opinion:-and from every mark of style and manner, I make no doubt of ascribing it to Shirley. Mr. Langbaine informs us, that he left some plays in MS.-These were written about the time of the Restoration, when the accent in question was more generally altered.

Perhaps the mistake arose from an abbreviation of the name. Mr. Dodsley knew not that the tragedy of Andromana was Shirley's, from the very same cause. Thus a whole stream of Biographers tells us, that Marston's plays were printed at London, 1633, "by the care of William Shakespeare, the famous comedian."-Here again I suppose, in some transcript, the real publisher's name, William Sheares, was abbreviated. No one hath protracted the life of Shakspeare beyond 1616, except Mr. Hume; who is pleased to add a year to it, in contradiction to all manner of evidence.

Shirley is spoken of with contempt in Mac

Flecknoe; but his imagination is sometimes fine to an extraordinary degree. I recollect a passage in the fourth book of the Paradise Lost, which hath been suspected of imitation, as a prettiness below the genius of Milton: I mean, where Uriel glides backward and forward to heaven on a sun-beam. Dr. Newton informs us, that this might possibly be hinted by a picture of Annibal Caracci in the King of France's cabinet; but I am apt to believe that Milton had been struck with a portrait in Shirley. Fernando, in the comedy of The Brothers, 1652, describes Jacinta at vespers:

"Her eye did seem to labour with a tear,
"Which suddenly took birth, but overweigh'd
"With its own swelling, drop'd upon her bosome;
"Which by reflexion of her light, appear'd
"As nature meant her sorrow for an ornament:
"After, her looks grew chearfull, and I saw
"A smile shoot gracefull upward from her eyes,.
"As if they had gain'd a victory o'er grief,
"And with it many beams twisted themselves,
"Upon whose golden threads the angels walk
"To and again from heaven."-

You must not think me infected with the spirit of Lauder, if I give you another of Milton's imi

tations:

66

The swan with arched neck

"Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
"Her state with oary feet." Book VII. v. 438, &c.

* Middleton, in an obscure play called A Game at Chesse, hath some very pleasing lines on a similar occasion:

66

Upon those lips, the sweete fresh buds of youth,
"The holy dewe of prayer lies like pearle,

"Dropt from the opening eye-lids of the morne
"Upon the bashfull rose.-

(

"The ancient poets, says Mr. Richardson, have not hit upon this beauty; so lavish have they been in their descriptions of the swan. Homer calls the swan long-necked, daxxodsipor; but how much more pittoresque, if he had arched this length of neck?" For this beauty, however, Milton was beholden to Donne; whose name, I believe, at present is better known than his writings:

-Like a ship in her full trim,

"A swan, so white that you may unto him
"Compare all whitenesse, but himselfe to none,
"Glided along, and as he glided watch'd,

"And with his arched neck this poore fish catch'd.-"
Progresse of the Soul, st. 24.

Those highly finished landscapes, the Seasons, are indeed copied from nature, but Thomson sometimes recollected the hand of his master:

The stately sailing swan

"Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale;

"And arching proud his neck with oary feet,
"Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier isle,
"Protective of his young.-

But to return, as we say on other occasions.-Perhaps the advocates for Shakspeare's knowledge of the Latin language may be more successful. Mr. Gildon takes the van. "It is plain, that he was acquainted with the fables of antiquity very well that some of the arrows of Cupid are pointed with lead and others with gold, he found in Ovid; and what he speaks of Dido, in Virgil: nor do I know any translation of these poets so ancient as Shakspeare's time." The passages on which these sagacious remarks are made, occur in A Midsummer-Night's Dream; and exhibit, we

see, a clear proof of acquaintance with the Latin classicks. But we are not answerable for Mr. Gildon's ignorance; he might have been told of Caxton and Douglas, of Surrey and Stanyhurst, of Phaer and Twyne, of Fleming and Golding, of Turberville and Churchyard! but these fables were easily known without the help of either the originals or the translations. The fate of Dido had been sung very early by Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; Marlowe had even already introduced her to the stage: and Cupid's arrows appear with their characteristick differences in Surrey, in Sidney, in Spenser, and every sonnetteer of the time. Nay, their very names were exhibited long before in The Romaunt of the Rose: a work, you may venture to look into, notwithstanding Master Prynne hath so positively assured us, on the word of John Gerson, that the author is most certainly damned, if he did not care for a serious repentance.3

Mr. Whalley argues in the same manner, and with the same success. He thinks a passage in The Tempest,

3 Had our zealous puritan been acquainted with the real crime of De Mehun, he would not have joined in the clamour against him. Poor Jehan, it seems, had raised the expectations of a monastery in France, by the legacy of a great chest, and the weighty contents of it; but it proved to be filled with nothing better than vetches. The friars enraged at the ridicule and disappointment, would not suffer him to have christian burial. See the Hon. Mr. Barrington's very learned and curious Observations on the Statutes, 4to. 1766, p. 24. From the Annales d'Aquitaine. Par. 1537.

Our author had his full share in distressing the spirit of this restless man. "Some Play-books are grown from Quarto into Folio; which yet bear so good a price and sale, that I cannot but with griefe relate it.-Shackspeer's Plaies are printed in the best Crowne-paper, far better than most Bibles !"