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TITUS ANDRONICUS.

It is no incurious speculation, to mark the gradations by which he rose from mediocrity to the summit of excellence; from artless and uninteresting dialogues, to those unparalleled compofitions, which have rendered him the delight and wonder of successive ages.

MALONE.

Ahl if Longinus had read Shakespcare!

M. SHERLOCK.

Vignette.

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Head-piece.

THE HE respectable names who have given decided opinions against this play being the production of Shakespeare, will rather deter the proposer of this edition from being very anxious in adorning it with many engravings. He must consider it as no production of Shakespeare's, notwithstanding the opinion of an ingenious and moralizing female critic, " that he would never have strewed such sweet flowers upon a caput mortuum, if fome child of his had not lain entombed underneath." Few will find themselves much interested in this fanguinary performance *. As we are told, however, that from the exceeding candour and good-nature of Shakespeare, he very frequently affifted others in their dramatic pursuits; and as fome fine touches of a superior hand occafionally (though rarely) present themselves, it would be hard to deny due homage to such, as they might have been, and no doubt were, the production of his pen.

I WOULD propose then as a Head-piece to this play, an exact copy of the whole and entire Vignette scene print, with which Mr. De Loutherbourgh has enriched Bell's last edition, without the least alteration what

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* Who can suppose Shakespeare to have written these lines :

Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd,
Doth burn the heart to cinders, where it is.

ever

We may as well suppose Mortimer to have given us the designs of Henry Overton-or Hogarth to have drawn those of Collet. I cannot but think that many parts of this play (particularly the third act) were written with the same design as Fielding's Tom Thumb-if not-they are of that complexion that his own Caliban would shrink from them; and yet we are assured by an Editor of no Gothic prepoffeffions, that this third act in particular may be read with admiration, even by the most

delicate!

ever, unless indeed fome very little alteration in the face of Quintus. For though the defigned print for page 497 will be relative to this unhallowed and blood-stained hole, yet it will by no means interfere with the present Head-piece; and besides, fo fine a description as this play gives us of the pit, may well deserve to be the subject of a second engraving; and I should be blamed for relinquishing from this projected edition, so well executed a design as the above most certainly is.

Scene-Prints.

I CAN scarce conceive a more interesting etching than might be taken in the style of Mortimer's York, and representing a half-length or portrait of Titus, when speaking the funeral oration on the interment of his sonst. The dress might be partly taken from the cut in Theobald's 12mo. edition.

Page 497.

To produce a metzotinto for this page will require the invention of a wild and terrible imagination-Savage as Salvator Rofa, fierce as Michael

Angelo.

† THE lines are inexpreffibly foothing-to give them the highest praise-they are worthy of Shakef. peare. They are such as we may suppose his shade to have offered, at the tomb of his warmest advocate

In peace and honour rest thou here O Garrick:
My readiest champion, repose though here in rest,
Secure from worldly chances and mishaps !
Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
Here grow no damned grudges; here no storm,,
No noife, but filence and eternal fleep.

Angelo. The gloomy terrors of Pousin should be aided with the imagination of such painters as Brueghel d'enfer, Callot, P. Testa, Albert Durer (who has given us a hell-scene, and a man on horseback followed by a spectre, and accompanied by Death on horseback), the painter of Ugolino, perhaps ‡, and others, whose pencils have touched the terrible graces. Such only can represent this detested, dark, and blood-drinking pit. This admirable description of Shakespeare's, well merits the exertions of genius. He himself tells us, that in or near this abhorred pit,

at dead time of the night

A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make fuch fearful and confused cries,
As any mortal body, hearing it,
Would straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.

THE ragged entrails of the pit will be feen, by means of the light arifing from the ring on the bloody finger of Baffianus, whose ghastly and murdered carcase must be drawn, with Marcus viewing it with startled fear *. A human skeleton would not be improperly introduced in fome

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corner

† "WITH whose pencil, Beauty in all her forms, and the Passions in all their varieties are equally familiar." NICHOLL'S HOGARTH.

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THE situation of Aaron Hill, shocking as it was, was yet wanting in one of the terrible graces of Shakespeare's pit:-the fearful and confused cries of snakes and swelling toads.

"THE celebrated Aaron Hill, when in Egypt, had the curiofity to examine a catacomb; he was accompanied in his expedition by two other gentlemen, and conducted by a guide, (one of the natives of the country.) They at length arrived at the spot, and without taking notice of some fellows who were fauntering about the place, they descended by ropes into the vault. No sooner were they let down, than they were presented with a spectacle which struck them with terror: two gentlemen, apparently starved to death, lay before them. One of these unhappy victims had a tablet in his hand, on which was written, in pathetic language, the story of their lamentable fate: it seems they were brothers of rank and family in Venice, and having, in the course of their travels, entrusted themselves with one of the natives, for the purpose of visiting the infide of the catacomb, the perfidious villain had left them

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