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of Pericles could be taken, "not meeting in history with any such Prince of Tyre," yet his legend may be found at large in old Gower, under the name of Appolynus.*

Pericles is one of the plays omitted in the latter editions, as well as the early folios, and not improperly; though it was published many years before the death of Shakspeare, with his name in the title-page. Aulus Gellius informs us, that some plays are ascribed absolutely to Plautus, which he only re-touched and polished; and this is undoubtedly the case with our author likewise. The revival of this performance, which Ben Jonson calls stale and mouldy, was probably his earliest attempt in the drama. I know, that another of these discarded pieces, The Yorkshire Tragedy, hath been frequently called so; but most certainly it was not written by our poet at all: nor indeed was it printed in his life-time. The fact on which it is built, was perpetrated no sooner than 1604:† much too late for so mean a performance from the hand of Shakspeare.

Sometimes a very little matter detects a forgery. You may remember a play called The Double Falshood, which Mr. Theobald was desirous of palming upon the world for a posthumous one of Shakspeare: and I see it is classed as such in the last edition of the Bodleian catalogue. Mr. Pope himself, after all the strictures of Scriblerus,‡ in a letter to Aaron Hill, supposes it of that age; but a mistaken accent determines it to have been written since the middle of the last century:

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This late example

"Of base Henriquez, bleeding in me now,

"From each good aspect takes away my trust."

And in another place,

"You have an aspect, sir, of wondrous wisdom."

The word aspect, you perceive, is here accented on the first syllable, which, I am confident, in any sense of it, was never the case in the time of Shakspeare; though it may sometimes appear to be so, when we do not observe a preceding elision.§

In the first Vol. of the Palace of Pleasure, 4to. 1566.

* Confessio Amantis, printed by T. Berthelet, folio, 1532, p. 175, &c.

"William Caluerley, of Caluerley in Yorkshire, Esquire, murdered two of his owne children in his owne house, then stabde his wife into the body with full intent to haue killed her, and then instantlie with like fury went from his house, to haue slaine his yongest childe at nurse, but was preuented. Hee was prest to death in Yorke the 5 of August, 1604." Edm. Howes' Continuation of John Stowe's Summarie, 8vo. 1607, p. 574. The story appeared before in a 4to. pamphlet, 1605. It is omitted in the folio chronicle, 1631.

These, however, he assures Mr. Hill, were the property of Dr. Arbuthnot.

Some of the professed imitators of our old poets have not attended to this and many other minutie: I could point out to you several performances in the respective styles of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakspeare, which the imitated bard could not possibly have either read or construed.

This very accent has troubled the annotators on Milton. Dr. Bentley observes it to be "a tone different from the present use." Mr. Manwaring, in his Treatise of Harmony and Numbers, very solemnly informs us, that "this verse is defective both in accent and quantity, B. III, v. 266:

'His words here ended, but his meek aspéct

'Silent yet spake.

Here (says he) a syllable is acuted and long, whereas it should be short and graved!"

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And a still more extraordinary gentleman, one Green, who published a specimen of a new version of the Paradise Lost, into BLANK verse, by which that amazing work is brought somewhat nearer the summit of perfection," begins with correcting a blunder in the fourth Book, v. 540:

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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 above-mentioned.-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:

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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."

Thus a line in Hamlet's description of the Player, should be printed as in the old folios:

"Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspéct." agreeably to the accent in a hundred other places.

* 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.

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

To whom then shall we ascribe it?-Somebody hath told us, who should seem to be a nostrum-monger 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 edi. tion, 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 be certainly 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 present 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 tell us, that Marston's plays were printed at London, 1633, "by the care of William Shakspeare, 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.*-

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

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The swan with arched neck

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

"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, dorixoder pov; 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:

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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.

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Progresse of the Soul, st. 24.

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

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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 other isle,
"Protective of his young.

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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 ido, in Virgil: nor do I know any translation of those 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

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

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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.

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.*

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

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High queen of state,

"Great Juno comes; I know her by her gait."

a remarkable instance of Shakspeare's knowledge of ancient poetick story; and that the hint was furnished by the divûm incedo regina of Virgil.t

You know honest John Taylor the Water-poet, declares that he never learned his Accidence, and that Latin and French were to him Heathen-Greek; yet by the help of Mr. Whalley's argument, I will prove him a learned man, in spite of every thing, he may say to the contrary: for thus he makes a gallant address his lady:

in whom the

"Most inestimable magazine of beauty port and majesty of Juno, the wisdom of Jove's braine-bred girle, and the feature of Cytherea,+ have their domestical habitation."

*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 !”

Others would give up this passage for the vera incessu pa. tuit idea: but I am not able to see any improvement in the matter: even supposing the poet had been speaking of Juno, and no previous translation were extant.

This passage recalls to my memory a very extraordinay fact. A few years ago, at a great court on the continent, a countryman

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