friend, the very ingenious editor of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, hath shown our author to have been sometimes contented with a legendary ballad.

The story of the misanthrope is told in almost every collection of the time; and particularly in two books, with which Shakspeare was intimately acquainted; the Palace of Pleasure, and the English Plutarch. Indeed from a passage in an old play, called Jack Drum's Entertainment, I conjecture that he had before made his appearance on the stage.

I

Were this a proper place for fuch a disquifition, I could give you many cafes of this kind. We are fent for instance to Cinthio for the plot of Measure for Measure, and Shakspeare's judgment hath been attacked for fome deviations from him in the conduct of it: when probably all he knew of the matter was from madam Isabella in the Heptameron of Whetstone. Ariosto is continually quoted for the fable of Much Ado about Nothing; but I fufpect our poet to have been fatisfied with the Geneura of Turberville. As you like it was certainly borrowed, if we believe Dr. Grey, and Mr. Upton, from the Coke's Tale of Gamelyn; which by the way was not printed till a century afterward: when in truth the old bard, who was no hunter of MSS. contented himself solely with Lodge's Rosalynd, or

1

The

Euphues' Golden Legacye, quarto, 1590. story of All's well that ends well, or, as I suppose it to have been sometimes called, Love's Labour Wonne, is originally indeed the property of Boccace,4 but it came immediately to Shakspeare from Painter's Giletta of Narbon.5 Mr. Langbaine could not conceive, whence the story 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.6

66

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 undoubt

3 See Meres's Wits Treasury, 1598, p. 282.

4 Our ancient poets are under greater obligations to Boccace, than is generally imagined. Who would suspect, that Chaucer hath borrowed from an Italian the facetious tale of the Miller of Trumpington?

Mr. Dryden observes on the epick performance, Palamon and Arcite, a poem little inferior in his opinion to the Iliad or the Eneid, that the name of its author is wholly loft, and Chaucer is now become the original. But he is mistaken: this too was the work of Boccace, and printed at Ferrara in folio, con il commento di Andrea Bassi, 1475. I have seen a copy of it, and a tranflation into modern Greek, in the noble library of the very learned and communicative Dr. Askew.

It is likewise to be met with in old French, under the title of La Theseide de Jean Boccace, contenant les belles & chastes amours de deux jeunes Chevaliers Thebains Arcite & Pale

mon.

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

6

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

edly the cafe with our author likewise. The revival of this performance, which Ben Jonson calls ftale 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 fo; 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 fooner than 1604 :7 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 Falfhood, which Mr. Theobald was defirous of palming upon the world for a pofthumous one of Shakspeare: and I fee it is classed as fuch 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 miftaken accent determines it to have been written since the middle of the last century:

This late example

"Of base Henriquez, bleeding in me now,
"From each good aspect takes away my truft."

And in another place,

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

The word afpect, you perceive, is here accented on the first fyllable, 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 fo, when we do not observe a preceding elision.9

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

This very accent has troubled the annotators or Milton. Dr. Bentley observes it to be " a tone different from the present use." Mr. Manwaring, in his Treatise of Harmony and Numbers, very folemnly 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 !"

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:

The setting fun
"Slowly descended, and with right aspéct-
" Levell'd his evening rays.”

Not So in the new version :

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

I

Enough of fuch 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 affifted 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 Falfhood is fuperior 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 found 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 refift the opportunity of claiming them: but his claim had been more easily allowed to 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.