"If tradition may be trusted, Shakspeare often baited at the Crown Inn or Tavern, in Oxford, in his journey to and from London. The landlady was a woman of great beauty and sprightly wit, and her husband, Mr John Davenant, (afterwards mayor of that city,) a grave melancholy man ; who, as well as his wife, used much to delight in Shakspeare's pleasant company. Their son young Will, Davenant (afterwards Sir William) was then a little school-boy in the town, of about seven or eight years old, and so fond also of Shakspeare, that whenever he heard of his arrival, he would fly from school to see him. One day an old townsman observing the boy running homeward almost out of breath, asked him whither he was posting in that heat and hurry. He answered, to see his god-father Shakspeare. There's a good boy, said the other, but have a care that you don't take God's name in vain. This story Mr. Pope told me, at the Earl of Oxford's table, upon occasion of some discourse which arose about Shakspeare's monument then newly erected in Westminster Abbey; and he quoted Mr. Betterton the player for his authority. I answered, that I thought such a story might have enriched the variety of those choice fruits of observation he has presented to us in his preface to the edition he had published of our poet's works. He replied-" There might be in the garden of mankind such plants as would seem to pride themselves more in a regular production of their own native fruits, than in having the repute of bearing a richer kind by grafting; and this was the reason he omitted it. 3

[] He was born at Oxford in February 1605-6.

MALONE.

[2] This monument," says Mr. Granger, was erected in 1741, by the direction of the Earl of Burlington, Dr. Mead, Mr. Pope, and Mr. Martyn, Mr. Fleetwood and Mr. Rich gave each of them a benefit towards it, from one of Shakspeare's plays. It was executed by H. Scheemaker, after a design of Kent.

"On the monument is inscribed-amor publicus posuit. Dr. Mead objected to amor publicus, as not occurring in old classical inscriptions; but Mr. Pope and the other gentlemen concerned insisting that it should stand, Dr. Mead yielded the point, saying,

"Omnia vincit amor, nos et cedamus amori."

"This anecdote was communicated by Dr. Lort, late Greek Professor of Cambridge, who had it from Dr. Mead himself.'

It was recorded at the time in The Gentleman's Magazine for Feb. 1741, by a writer who objects to every part of the inscription, and says it ought to have been, "G. S. centum viginti et quatuor post obitum annis populus plaudens [aut favens] posuit."

The monument was opened Jan. 29, 1741. Scheemaker is said to have got 300l. for his work. The performers at each house, much to their honour, performed gratis; and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster took nothing for the ground. The money received by the performance at Drury Lane, amounted to above 2001. at Covent Garden to about 100l. These particulars I learn from Oldys's MS. notes on Langbaine. MALONE.

[3] Mr. Oldys might have added, that he was the person who suggested to Mr. Pope the singular course, which he pursued in his edition of Shak

"Old Mr. Bowman the player reported from Sir William Bishop, that some part of Sir John Falstaff's character was drawn from a townsman of Stratford, who either faithlessly broke a contract, or spitefully refused to part with some land for a valuable consideration, adjoining to Shakspeare's, in or near that town."

To these anecdotes I can only add the following.

At the conclusion of the advertisement prefixed to Lintot's edition of Shakspeare's Poems, it is said, "That most learned prince and great patron of learning, King James the First, was pleased with his own hand to write an amicable letter to Mr. Shakspeare; which letter, though now lost, remained long in the hands of Sir William D'Avenant, as a credible person now living can testify."

Mr. Oldys, in a MS. note to his copy of Fuller's Worthies, observes, that "the story came from the Duke of Buckingham, who had it from Sir William D'Avenant.”

The late Mr. Thomas Osborne, bookseller, (whose exploits are celebrated by the author of the Dunciad,) being ignorant in what form or language our Paradise Lost was written, employed one of his garretteers to render it from a French translation into English prose. Lest, hereafter, the compositions of Shakspeare should be brought back into their native tongue from the version of Monsieur le Compte de Catuelan, le Tourneur, &c. it may be necessary to observe, that all the following particulars, extracted from the preface of these gentlemen, are as little founded in truth as their description of the ridiculous Jubilee at Stratford, which they have been taught to represent as an affair of general approbation and national

concern.

speare. "Remember," says Oldys in a MS. note to his copy of Langbaine, article, Shakspeare, "what I observed to my Lord Oxford for Mr. Pope's use, out of Cowley's preface." The observation here alluded to, I believe, is one made by Cowley in his preface, p. 53, edit. 1710, 8v0: "This has been the case with Shakspeare, Fletcher, Jonson, and many others, part of whose poems I should presume to take the boldness to prune and lop away, if the care of replanting them in print did belong to me; neither would I make any scruple to cut off from some the unnecessary young suckers, and from others the old withered branches; for a great wit is no more tied to live in a vast volume, than in a gigantic body; on the contrary it is commonly more vigorous the less space it animates, and as Statias says of little Tydeus,

"totos infusa per artus

Major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus."

Pope adopted this very unwarrantable idea; striking out from the text of his author whatever he did not like: and Cowley himself has suffered a sort of poetical punishment for having suggested it, the learned Bishop of Worcester [Dr. Hurd] having pruned and lopped away his beautiful luxuri. ances, as Pope, on Cowley's suggestion, did those of Shakspeare. MALONE

They say, that Shakspeare came to London without a plan, and finding himself at the door of a theatre, instinctively stopped there, and offered himself to be a holder of horses :-that he was remarkable for his excellent performance of the Ghost in Hamlet-that he borrowed nothing from preceding writers-that all on a sudden he left the stage, and returned without eclat into his native country :-that his monument at Stratford is of copper-that the courtiers of James I. paid several compliments to him which are still preserved :—that he relieved a widow, who, together with her numerous family, was involved in a ruinous lawsuit :-that his editors have restored many passages in his plays, by the assistance of the manuscripts he left behind him, &c. &c.

Let me not, however, forget the justice due to these ingenious Frenchmen, whose skill and fidelity in the execution of their very difficult undertaking, is only exceeded by such a display of candour as would serve to cover the imperfections of much less elegant and judicious writers. STEEVENS.

JOHNSON'S PREFACE.

P. 33. tragedies to-day, and comedies to-morrow.] Thus, says Downes the Prompter, p. 22: "The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was made some time after [1662] into a tragicomedy, by Mr. James Howard, he preserving Romeo and Juliet alive; so that when the tragedy was revived again, 'twas play'd alternately, tragical one day, and tragi-comical another, for several days together." STEEVENS.

P.34. his comedy to be instinct.] In the rank and order of geniuses it must, I think, be allowed, that the writer of good tragedy is superior. And therefore, I think the opinion, which I am sorry to perceive gains ground, that Shakspeare's chief and predominant talent lay in comedy, tends to lessen the unrivalled excellence of our divine bard.

J. WARTON.

P.37. —with those of turbulence, violence, and adventure.] As a further extenuation of Shakspeare's error, it may be urged that he found the Gothic mythology of Fairies already incorporated with Greek and Roman story, by our early translators. Phaer and Golding, who first gave us Virgil and Ovid in an English dress, introduce Fairies almost as often as Nymphs are mentioned in these classic authors. Thus Homer, in his 24th Iliad:

"In Sypilus-in that place where 'tis said

"The goddesse Fairies use to dance about the funeral bed "Of Achelous :

Neither are our ancient versifiers less culpable on the score of anachronisms. Under their hands the balista becomes a cannon, and other modern instruments are perpetually substituted for such as were the produce of the remotest ages.

It may be added, that in Arthur Hall's version of the fourth Iliad, Juno says to Jupiter;

"-the time will come that Totnam French shall turn.” And in the tenth Book we hear of "The Bastile," "Lemster wooll," and "The Byble.”

STE.

P. 40. -unities of time and place.] Mr. Twining, among his judicious remarks on the poetic of Aristotle, observes, that "with respect to the strict unities of time and place, no such rules were imposed on the Greek poets by the critics, or by themselves; nor are imposed on any poet, either by the nature, or the end, of the dramatic imitation itself."

Aristotle does not express a single precept concerning unity of place. This supposed restraint originated from the hypercriticism of his French commentators.

STE.

P.41. make the stage a field.] So, in the Epistle Dedica tory to Dryden's Love's Triumphant: "They who will not allow this liberty to a poet, make it a very ridiculous thing, for an audience to suppose themselves sometimes to be in a field, sometimes in a garden, and at other times in a chamber. There are not, indeed, so many absurdities in their supposition, as in ours; but 'tis an original absurdity for the audience to suppose themselves to be in any other place, than in the very theatre in which they sit; which is neither a chamber, nor garden, nor yet a public place of any business but that of the representation." STE.

P.54. -we make such prose in common conversation.] Thus, also, Dryden, in the Epistle Dedicatory to his Rival Ladies : "Shakspeare who (with some errors not to be avoided in that age, had, undoubtedly, a larger soul of poesie than ever any of our nation) was the first, who, to shun the pains of continual rhyming, invented that kind of writing which we call blank verse, but the French more properly, prose mesurée; into which the English tongue so naturally slides, that in writing prose 'tis hardly to be avoided."

STE.

P. 56. -printed without correction of the press.] Much deserved censure has been thrown out on the carelessness of our ancient printers, as well as on the wretched transcripts they obtained from contemporary theatres. Yet I cannot help observing that, even at this instant, should any one undertake to publish a play of Shakspeare from pages of no greater

fidelity than such as are issued out for the use of performers, the press would teem with as interpolated and inextricable nonsense as it produced above a century ago. Mr. Colman, who cannot be suspected of ignorance or misrepresentation, in his preface to the last edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, very forcibly styles the prompter's books "the most inaccurate and barbarous of all manuscripts." And well may they deserve that character: for verse, as I am informed, still continues to be transcribed as prose by a set of mercenaries, who in general have neither the advantage of literature or understanding. Foliis tantum ne carmina manda ne turbata volent ludibria, was the request of Virgil's Hero to the Sybil, and should also be the supplication of every dramatic poet to the agents of a prompter.

STE.

P. 73. from the bishop of Aleria] John Andreas. He was secretary to the Vatican Library during the papacies of Paul II. and Sixtus IV. By the former he was employed to superintend such works as were to be multiplied by the new art of printing, at that time brought into Rome. He published Herodotus, Strabo, Livy, Aulus Gellius, &c. His schoolfellow, Cardinal de Cusa, procured him the bishopric of Accia, a province in Corsica; and Paul II. afterwards appointed him to that of Aleria in the same island, where he died in 1493. STE.

THE TEMPEST.

P. 5. Play the men.] i. e. act with spirit, behave like men. So, Chapman's translation of the second Iliad:

"Which doing, thou shalt know what souldiers play

the men,

"And what the cowards."

Again, in scripture, 2 Sam. x. 12: "Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people."

MALONE,

P. 6. bring her to try Hackluyt's Voyages, 1598: we cut the hauser, and so gate the sea to our friend, and tried out all that day with our main course."

with main course.] Probaby from "And when the barke had way,

MAL.

This phrase occurs also in Smith's Sea Grammar, 1627, 4to. under the article How to handle a ship in a Storme: "Let us lie at Trie with our maine course; that is, to hale the tacke aboord, the sheat close aft, the boling set up, and the helme tied close aboord."

STE.

P. 6. Lay her a-hold, a-hold ;] To lay a ship a-hold, is to bring her to lie as near the wind as she can, in order to keep clear of the land, and get her out to sea.

STE