Life does not often receive good unmixed with evil. The benefits of the art of printing are depraved by the facility with which fcandal may be diffufed, and fecrets revealed; and by the temptation by which traffick folicits avarice to betray the weakneffes of paffion, or the confidence of friendship.

I cannot forbear to think these pofthumous publications injurious to fociety. A man confcious of literary reputation will grow in time afraid to write with tenderness to his fifter, or with fondness to his child; or to remit on the flightest occasion, or most preffing exigence, the rigour of critical choice, and grammatical feverity. That esteem which preferves his letters, will at laft produce his disgrace; when that which he wrote only to his friend or his daughter fhall be laid open to the publick.

There is perhaps fufficient evidence, that most of the plays in queftion, unequal as they may be to the rest, were written by Shakefpeare; but the reafon generally given for publishing the lefs correct pieces of an author, that it affords a more impartial view of a man's talents or way of thinking, than when we only fee him in form, and prepared for our reception, is not enough to condemn an editor who thinks and practises otherwife. For what is all this to fhew, but that every man is more dull at one time than another; a fact which the world would eafily have admitted, without asking any proofs in its fupport that might be deftructive to an author's reputation.

To conclude; if the work, which this publication was meant to facilitate, has been already performed, the fatisfaction of knowing it to be so may be obtained from hence; if otherwife, let thofe who raifed expectations of correctnefs, and through negligence defeated them, be justly expofed by future editors, who will now be in poffeffion of by far the greatest part of what they might have enquired after for years to no purpofe; for in refpect of fuch a number of the old quartos as are here exhibited, the first folio is a common book. This advantage will at least arise, that future editors, having equally recourfe to the fame copies, can challenge diftinction and preference only by genius, capacity, induftry, and learning.

As I have only collected materials for future artists, I confider what I have been doing as no more than an apparatus for their use. If the publick is inclined to receive

it as fuch, I am amply rewarded for my trouble; if otherwife, I fhall fubmit with chearfulness to the cenfure which fhould equitably fall on an injudicious attempt; having this confolation, however, that my defign amounted to no more than a wish to encourage others to think of preferving the oldest editions of the English writers, which are growing scarcer every day; and to afford the world all the affiftance or pleasure it can receive from the most authentick copies extant of its NOBLEST POET.

G. S.

SOME

SOME

ACCOUNT of the LIFE, &c.

O F

Mr. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Written by Mr. ROW E.

IT

T feems to be a kind of refpect due to the memory of excellent men, efpecially of thofe whom their wit and learning have made famous, to deliver fome account of themselves, as well as their works, to pofterity. For this reafon, how fond do we fee fome people of difcovering any little perfonal story of the great men of antiquity! their families, the common accidents of their lives, and even their hape, make, and features have been the subject of critical enquiries. How trifling foever this curiofity may seem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly satisfied with an account of any remarkable perfon, till we have heard him defcribed even to the very cloaths he wears. for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an author may fometimes conduce to the better understanding his book; and though the works of Mr. Shakespeare may feem to many not to want a comment, yet I fancy fome little account of the man himself may not be thought improper to go along with them.

As

He was the son of Mr. John Shakespeare, and was born at Stratford upon Avon, in Warwickshire, in April 1564. His family, as appears by the register and publick writings relating to that town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen. His father, who was a confiderable dealer in wool, had fo large a family, ten children in all, that though he was his eldest fon, he could give

him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, it is true, for fome time at a free-fchool, where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was mafter of: but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his afiftance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language. It is without controverfy, that in his works we fcarce find any traces of any thing that looks like an imitation of the ancients. The delicacy of his tafte, and the natural bent of his own great genius (equal, if not fuperior, to fome of the best of theirs) would certainly have led him to read and study them with fo much pleafure, that some of their fine images would naturally have infinuated themfelves into, and been mixed with his own writings; fo that his not copying at leaft fomething from them, may be an argument of his never having read them. Whether his ignorance of the ancients were a difadvantage to him or no, may admit of a difpute: for though the knowledge of them might have made him more correct, yet it is not improbable but that the regularity and deference for them, which would have attended that correctnefs, might have reftrained fome of that fire, impetuofity, and even beautiful extravagance which we admire in Shakespeare: and I believe we are better pleased with thofe thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination fupplied him fo abundantly with, than if he had given us the most beautiful paffages out of the Greek and Latin poets, and that in the most agreeable manner that it was poffible for a master of the English language to deliver them.

Upon his leaving school, he feems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father propofed to him; and in order to fettle in the world after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, faid to have been a fubftantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of fettlement he continued for fome time, till an extravagance that he was guilty of forced him both out of his country, and that way of living which he had taken up; and though it feemed at first to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occafion of exerting one of the greatest geniuses that ever was known in dramatick poetry. He had by a miffortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them, fome that made a frequent

practice

practice of deer-ftealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Cherlecot, near Stratford. For this he was profecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, fomewhat too feverely; and in order to revenge that ill ufage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the firft effay of his poetry, be loft, yet it is faid to have been fo very bitter, that it redoubled the profecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his bufinefs and family in Warwickshire, for fome time, and shelter himself in London.

It is at this time, and upon this accident,. that he is faid to have made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. He was received into the company then in being, at first in a very mean rank; but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the ftage, foon diftinguifhed him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. His name is printed, as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other players, before fome old plays, but without any particular account of what fort of parts he used to play; and though I have enquired, I could never meet with any further account of him this way, than that the top of his performance was the Ghoft in his own Hamlet. I should have been much more pleased, to have learned from certain authority, which was the first play he wrote*; it would be without doubt a pleasure to any man, curious in things of this kind, to fee and know what was the firft effay of a fancy like Shakespeare's. Perhaps we are not to look for his beginnings, like thofe of other authors, among their leaft perfect writings; art had fo little, and nature fo large a fhare in what he did, that, for aught I know, the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, and had the moft fire and ftrength of imagination in them, were the beft. I would not be thought by this to mean, that his fancy was fo loofe and extravagant, as to be independent on the rule and government of judgment; but that what he thought, was commonly fo great, fo justly and rightly conceived in itfelf, that it wanted little or no correction, and was immediately approved by an impartial judgment at the firft fight. But though the order of time in which the feveral pieces were written be generally uncertain, yet there are paffages

* The highest date of any I can yet find, is Romeo and Juliet in 1597, when the author was 33 years old; and Richard the Second, and Third, in the next year, viz. the 34th of his age. VOL. I. [M]

in