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both to draw, and hold you for his wit can no more lie hid, then it could be lost. Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe: And if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him. And so we leave you to other of his Friends, whom if you need, can bee your guides: if you neede them not, you can leade yourselves, and others. And such Readers we wish him.

"JOHN HEMINGE.
"HENRIE CONDELL."

Such is the testimony borne by two men who had acted in his plays, were his associates, in every sense of the term, partners in his pursuits, his emoluments, and his fame; and their evidence must be regarded as conclusive. Are we to suppose that if Bacon had written these dramas, and Shakespeare had been the impostor that Mr. William Henry Smith imagines, these editors, who knew the man well, would have declared, “We have scarce received from him a blot in his papers"? With Shakespeare's handwriting they must have been familiar, and that, at least, Bacon could not imitate. The poet had been dead seven years when the folio edition was published. According to the new theory, Bacon revised. these dramas between 1621 and 1623; the manuscript must, therefore, have been in his own handwriting, or in that of the friend or scribe whose assistance he sought; and John Heminge and Henry Condell would not have ventured to assert that they had received Shakespeare's papers, and that they scarcely contained a blot.

Bacon, too, had some regard for the opinion of posterity, some respect for his own fair fame; and had he committed this literary fraud, would not have allowed it to go forth branded as a double deception. It would have been bad enough to deceive the public respecting the authorship of these incomparable works, without adding to the wrong, and aggravating the injustice, by

the assertion, "It had been a thing, we confess, worthy to have been wished, that the author himself had lived to have set forth and overseen his own writings. But since it hath been ordained otherwise, and HE BY DEATH DEPARTED FROM THAT RIGHT, we pray you do not envy his friends, the office of their care and pain, to have collected and published them." Few men could be found bad and degraded enough to have affixed their names to such a wanton desecration of the memory of the dead, to such a gross injustice to the living. That preface forbids the thought that any person but William Shakespeare was the author of those dramas. This portion of the address to the general reader is remarkable; it is fatal to the Baconian theory, fatal to any conceivable theory that would attribute these productions to any conceivable person but William Shakespeare.

The secret, moreover, of William Shakespeare's supposed indifference to fame is also explained. Whilst engaged in his theatrical duties, he did not enjoy leisure or opportunity to superintend the publication of his dramatic works. But in his retirement at Stratford-upon-Avon, he addressed himself to the task; and the consequence was, the collection of the thirty-six plays in the folio, which he bequeathed to mankind as the productions of his mighty mind.

His editors state that the public had been before abused with "diverse stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors that exposed them ;" and that they had received the poet's own papers, establishing the Shakespearian canon, and they could assert, without fear of contradiction, "EVEN THOSE ARE NOW OFFERED TO YOUR VIEW CURED, AND PERFECT OF THEIR LIMBS; AND ALL THE REST ABSOLUTE IN THEIR NUMBERS, AS HE CONCEIVED THEM.

The men who penned that preface are well known, their assertion was not challenged when there were plenty of persons able to do so, had it been false, and posterity may

receive their testimony without hesitation. It may suit Mr. William Henry Smith's ideas of equity and fairdealing to declare that William Shakespeare did not write these dramas; but with such evidence as this in our possession, we can smile at his frivolous expedients.

The corrupt state of the text cannot in the least degree prejudice the view we have advocated; for, in the first place, the folio of 1623 was very carelessly edited; and in the second place, our language has undergone many transformations since the days of Elizabeth and the first James; and numerous changes in the outward circumstances of life, manners, and habits, have rendered allusions and sayings obscure, which, at the time of the publication of the first folio, were intelligible enough to the least enlightened of the poet's readers. That the folio of 1623 contains the real text of Shakespeare, few can doubt. That must be our basis to work upon all else is rottenness. All ideas of new texts and infallible correctors must end in smoke. Every attempt to clear up an obscure passage, or to hit upon the solution of an apparently corrupt reading, merits the warmest commendation; but conjectural emendations must not be received for more than they are worth. The text of 1623 is the rock upon which we take our stand. Self-evident blunders can be, of course, corrected; the various readings of the former quarto editions, whenever such readings are entitled to consideration, can be added in foot-notes, and the more discriminating suggestions of later commentators appended. These form the legitimate materials of footnotes and illustrations, but they ought, on no account whatever, to be given forth to the world as the words which Shakespeare wrote.

Making due allowance for the blunders that would inevitably occur in a work published ere printing had attained any great degree of excellence, we are constrained to admit that this edition was issued in a very slovenly state. A single fact will prove the assertion. The

H

name of "John Heminge" is spelt in two ways; and innumerable errors might be, and indeed have been, pointed out.

For the benefit of those who are not yet satisfied that William Shakespeare's claim to the authorship is fully made out, another illustration of the fact is appended. Following close upon the Address to "a great Variety of Readers," comes this commendatory tribute from Ben Jonson's ready and prolific pen :—

"To the memory of 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 Booke, and Fame :
While I confesse thy writings to be such,

As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much.
"Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these wayes
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 blinde Affection, which doth ne're advance

The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice, might pretend this praise,

And thinke to ruine, where it seem'd to raise.
These are, as some infamous Baud, or Whore,

Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proofe against them, and indeed
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.

I, therefore will begin. Soule of the Age!

The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome :

Thou art a Moniment, without a Tombe,
And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses;

I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses :
For, if I thought my judgement were of yeeres,
I should commit thee surely with thy peeres,

* I. e. most foolish.

And tell, how farre thou didst our Lily out-shine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names; but call forth thund'ring Æschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,

To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread,
And shake a Stage: Or, when thy Sockes were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison

Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!

And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warme
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme!
Nature her selfe was proud of his designes,
And joy'd to weare the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.
The merry Greeke, tart Aristophanes,

Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated, and deserted lye

As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet's matter, Nature be,

His Art doth give the fashion. And, that he,
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvile: turne the same,

(And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame;
Or for the lawrell, he may gaine a scorne,
For a good Poet's made, as well as borne.

And such wert thou. Looke how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so, the race

Of Shakespeare's minde, and manners brightly shines
In his well torned,* and true-filed lines :

In each of which, he seems to shake a Lance,

As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance.

*I. e. turned.

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