O fons of sport and pleasure: O thou wretch
That weep'ft for jealous love, or the fore wounds
Of conscious guilt, or death's rapacious hand
Which left thee void of hope: O ye who roam
In exile; ye who through the embattled field
Seek bright renown; or who for nobler palms
Contend, the leaders of a public caufe;
Approach: behold this marble. Know ye not
The features? Hath not oft his faithful tongue
Told you the fafhion of your own eftate,

The fecrets of your bofom? Here then, round
His monument with reverence while you fland,
Say to each other: "This was Shakefpeare's form;
"Who walk'd in every path of human life,
"Felt every paffion; and to all mankind.
"Doth now, will ever that experience yield
"Which his own genius only could acquire."

AKINSIDE.

From the fame Author's Pleasures of Imagination, Book 3.

when lightening fires

The arch of heaven, and thunders rock the ground,

When furious whirlwinds rend the howling air,

And ocean, groaning from his loweft bed,
Heaves his tempeftuous billows to the sky;
Amid the general uproar, while below
The nations tremble, Shakespeare looks abroad
From fome high cliff, fuperior, and enjoys
The elemental war.

For lofty sense,

Creative fancy, and inspection keen

Through the deep windings of the human heart,
Is not wild Shakespeare thine and nature's boast?

Thomson's Summer.

When learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes
Firft rear'd the stage, immortal Shakespeare rofe;
Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
Exhauited worlds, and then imagin'd new:
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Existence

Existence faw him fpurn her bounded reign,
And panting time toil'd after him in vain:
His pow'rful strokes prefiding truth impress'd,
And unrefifted paffion ftorm'd the breast.

Prologue at the opening of Drury-Lane Theatre in 1747-
By Dr. Samuel Johnson

What are the lays of artful Addifon,

Coldly correct, to Shakespeare's warblings wild?
Whom on the winding Avon's willow'd banks
Fair Fancy found, and bore the smiling babe
To a clofe cavern: (ftill the fhepherds thew
The facred place, whence with religious awe
They hear, returning from the field at eve,
Strange whifp'ring of fweet mufick thro' the air)
Here, as with honey gathered from the rock,
She fed the little prattler, and with fongs
Oft footh'd his wond'ring ears, with deep delight
On her foft lap he fat, and caught the founds.

The Enthufiaft, or the Lover of Nature, a Poem, by the

Rev. Jofeph Warton.

From the Rev. Thomas Warton's Addrefs to the Queen on her Marriage.

Here, boldly mark'd with every living hue,
Nature's unbounded portrait Shakespeare drew:
But chief, the dreadful groupe of human woes
The daring artist's tragic pencil chose;
Explor'd the pangs that rend the royal breast,
Thofe wounds that lurk beneath the tiffued veft.

Monody, written near Stratford upon Avon.

Avon, thy rural views, thy paftures wild,
The willows that o'erhang thy twilight edge,
Their boughs entangling with th' embattled fedge;
Thy brink with watery foliage quaintly fring'd,
Thy furface with reflected verdure ting'd;
Sooth me with many a penfive pleafure mild.

But

But while I mufe, that here the Bard Divine
Whofe facred duft yon high-arch'd ifles inclofe,
Where the tall windows rife in ftately rows,
Above th' embowering fhade,

Here firft, at Fancy's fairy-circled fhrinë,
Of daifies pied his infant offering made;
Here playful yet, in ftripling years unripe,
Fram'd of thy reeds a fhrill and artless pipe:
Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled,
As at the waving of fome magic wand;
An holy trance my charmed spirit wings,
And aweful fhapes of leaders and of kings,
People the bufy mead,

Like fpectres fwarming to the wifard's hall;
And flowly pace, and point with trembling hand
The wounds ill-cover'd by the purple pall.
Before me Pity feems to ftand

A weeping mourner, fmote with anguish fore,
To fee Misfortune rend in frantic mood
His robe, with regal woes embroider'd o'er.
Pale Terror leads the vifionary band,

And sternly shakes his fceptre, dropping blood.

Far from the fun and fummer gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: The dauntless child
Stretch'd forth his little arms, and fmil'd.
This pencil take (fhe faid) whofe colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:

Thine too thefe golden keys, immortal boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy;
Of horror that, and thrilling fears,

Or ope the facred fource of fympathetic tears.

By the fame

Gray's Ode on the Progrefs of Poefy,

Next Shakespeare fat, irregularly great,
And in his hand a magick rod did hold,
Which vifionary beings did create,
And turn the fouleft dross to pureft gold:
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Whateve

Whatever fpirits rove in earth or air,

Or bad, or good, obey his dread command;
To his behefts thefe willingly repair,

Thofe aw'd by terrors of his magic wand,

The which not all their powers united might withstand.

Lloyd's Progrefs of Envy, 1751.

Oh, where's the bard, who at one view
Could look the whole creation through,
Who travers'd all the human heart,
Without recourfe to Grecian art?
He fcorn'd the rules of imitation,
Of altering, pilfering, and translation,
Nor painted horror, grief, or rage,
From models of a former age;
The bright original he took,

And tore the leaf from nature's book.
'Tis Shakespeare

Lloyd's Shakespeare, a Poem.

In the first feat, in robe of various dyes,
A noble wildness flashing from his eyes,
Sat Shakefpeare.-In one hand a wand he bore,
For mighty wonders fam'd in days of yore;
The other held a globe, which to his will
Obedient turn'd, and own'd a mafter's skill:
Things of the nobleft kind his genius drew,
And look'd through nature at a fingle view:
A loofe he gave to his unbounded foul,
And taught new lands to rife, new feas to roll;
Call'd into being fcenes unknown before,

And, paffing nature's bounds, was fomething more.

Churchill's Rofciad.

Names

Names of the original Actors in the Plays of Shakefpeare: From the Folio, 1623.

It may appear fingular that the name of the celebrated Alleyn (founder of Dulwich College) fhould not occur in this lift of performers. But Alleyn was mafter of the Fortune playhouse, which he is faid either to have built or re-built; and therefore might have no connection with other theatres where the plays of Shakespeare were exhibited. We learn however from Langbaine, that he had been "an ornament to Black Friers." John Wilson, who appears to have acted in our author's Much Ado about Nothing, is likewife excluded from this catalogue; though Meres, in the Second Part of his Wits' Common-wealth, 1598, praifing feveral who were "famous for extemporall verfe," fays, " Of our Tarlton, doctor Cafe that learned phyfitian thus fpeaketh in the feventh book and feventeenth chapter of his Politikes; Ariftoteles fuum Theodoretum laudavit, quendam peritum tragoediarum a&torem; Cicero fuum Rofcium; nos Angli Tarletonum, in cujus voce & vultu omnes jocofi affilus, in cujus cerebrofo capite lepida facetia habitant. And fo is our wittie WILSON, who, for learning and extemporali witte in this facuitic, is without compare or compeere, &c." STEEVENS.

* Author of the Two Maids of Moorclacke, Com. 1609.

Author of Amends for Ladies, Com. 1639, and Woman is a Weathercock, Com. 1612. He alfo affiited Maflinger in the Fatal Dowry.

Α