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risms being such in kind and extent as they probably have very little supposed.

But as our Author reminds us, that " Good Wine needs no Bush," I shall no longer detain the Reader from these rich and salutary Fruits of this Shakesperian Vintage: which, while they animate and quicken the Intellect, will delight, without intoxicating, the Senses; gladden and meliorate the Heart.

CAPEL LOFFT.

Troston Hall, near Bury, Suffolk; 14th May, 1808.

IF good Sense, and moral Wisdom, and a vivid perception of the relative Duties and Affections of Life be the essential element of all good Dramatic Writing, I should be strongly dispos'd to say that none ever exceeded Shakespeare in this: And to apply to him, with the change of Socrates to Shakespeare, the words of Horace *.

Good Sense and moral Wisdom are the Source
Whence the true Drama gains its purest force;
The leaves of Shakespeare with this power are fraught:
Words follow prompt, when full and clear the thought.
Who knows the due to Country, and to Friends;
And what on Parents, Brethren, Guests, attends.
Of wedded Love the chaste and tender ties ;
The Order, Peace, and Bliss of Families;
And what the Judge, and what the Senator
Becomes, and what the Leader of the War;
He to each Character is sure to give

The

grace of Truth, and make it breathe and live.

Scribendi recte sapere est et Principium et Fons.
Rem tibi Socratica poterunt ostendere Chartæ ;
Verbaque provisam rem haud invita sequentur.
Qui didicit Patriæ quid debeat et quid Amicis,
Quo sit amore Parens, quo Frater amandus et Hospes ;
Quod sit Conscripti, quod Judicis Officium; quæ

Partes in Bellum missi Ducis, ille profecto

Reddere Persona scit convenientia cuique.

HOR.

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ADDENDA.

The Critical Reviewers, in giving an account of Mr. Octavius Gilchrist's Examination of the Charges main, tained by Messrs. Malone, Chalmers, and others, of Ben Jonson's Enmity, &c. towards Shakespeare, (which I did not see till long after the previous part of this Introduction was written and printed) thus express themselves:

"Though Shakespeare and Jonson were contemporaries, yet they were not rivals; they had both merit, and though that of Shakespeare was transcendant, yet it differed not only in degree but in kind from that of Jonson. Shakespeare was too great to be envied*: and Jonson appears to have had none of that malicious venom in his composition. We seldom cordially praise, when dead, the individual towards whom we have been clandestinely hostile and secretly bitter when alive. But the praises which Jonson showered on the urn of Shakespeare, were evi

It is, perhaps, clearer and more just to say, Jonson was too great to envy. No Excellence on Earth exalts above Envy; which is not Emulation of attainable perfection, but Hatred of that Excellence which the Envier despairs of attaining.

dently not the effect of constraint but choice; they do not betray the marks of affected regard and concealed dislike; they are not the cant of hypocritical encomium, but the genuine unvitiated tribute of the heart. The lines which Jonson inserted under the portrait of Shakespeare, and those which he dedicated to his memory, bear evident marks of his veneration for the poet, and of his personal esteem for the man. Mr. Farmer justly says that Ben's verses on him who wrote for all time are 'the warmest panegyrick that ever was written,' We shall quote the inscription under the picture, and afterwards the verses addressed to his memory, in which, though he notices his defect of classical erudition, yet this is not said to diminish but to exalt his fame; for he places the productions. of his genius above all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome sent forth.' And passes on his genius this deserved sublimity of eulogy, that

He was not of an age; BUT FOR ALL TIME;' addressing him in terms which envy may hypocritically employ towards the living, but which when hypocrisy is no longer necessary, it seldom uses to the dead :

WRITTEN UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF SHAKESPEARE:
Prefixt to the first and second Editions of his Plays.

· This figure that thou here seest put
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature, to outdo the life.
O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he hath hit
His face, the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass;
But since he cannot, reader look,
Not on his picture, but his book.'

To the Memory of

B. J.

MY BELOVED, THE AUTHOR, MR, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE*, And what he hath left Us.

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book, and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such,

As neither man, nor muse, can praise too much;
"Tis true, and all men's suffrage; but these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise:
For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chances
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise;
These are, as some infamous bawd, or whore,
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them; and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need:

In the 2d Ed. 1032.

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