that disadvantageous one in which it now appears to

us.

I will conclude by faying of Shakespear, that with all his faults, and with all the irregularity of his drama, one may look upon his works, in comparison of those that are more finished and regular, as upon an ancient majestic piece of Gothic architecture, compared with a neat modern building. The latter is more elegant and glaring, but the former is more strong and more folemn. It must be allowed, that in one of thefe there are materials enough to make many of the other. It has much the greater variety, and much the nobler apartments; though we are often conducted to them by dark, odd, and uncouth paffages. Nor does the whole fail to ftrike us with greater reverence, though many of the parts are childish, ill-placed, and unequal to its grandeur.

N. B. One paragraph of this preface is omitted, as relating to matters peculiar to Mr. Pope's edition.

Some account of the Life and Writings of Mr. WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR. Written by N. Rowe, Efq; born 1673 d 1737

IT feems to be a kind of refpect due to the memory of excellent men, especially of those whom their wit and learning have made famous, to deliver fome account of themselves, as well as their works, to pofterity. For this reason, how fond do we fee fome peo ple of difcovering any little perfonal story of the great men of antiquity! Their families, the common accidents of their lives; and even their fhape, make, and features, have been the fubject of critical inquiries. How trifling foever this curiofity may feem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly fatisfied with an account of any remarkable perfon, till we have heard him defcribed even to the very cloaths he wears. As 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. Shakespear may seem 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.

He was the son of Mr. John Shakespear; and was born at Stratford upon Avon, in Warwickshire, in A, pril 1564. His family, as appears by the register and public 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 master of: but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his affiitance at home, forced his fa ther 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 taste, and the

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natural bent of his own great genius, (equal, if not fuperior, to fome of the beft of theirs), would certainly have led him to read and study them with fo much pleafure, that fome of their fine images would naturally have infinuated themselves into, and been mixed with his own writings; so that his not copying at least something from them, may be an argument of his never ha ving read them Whether his ignorance of the ancients were a disadvantage to him or no, may admit of a difpute: for tho' 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 restrained fome of that fire, impetuofity, and even beautiful extravagance, which we admire in Shakespear: and I believe we are better pleafed with thofe thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination fupplied him so 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 fchool, 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 fometime, 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 dramatic poetry. He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill-company; and, amongst them fome that made a frequent practice of deer-steeling, engaged him with them 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

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to fevenge that ill ufage, he made a ballad upon him. And tho this, probably the first effay of his poetry, be loft, yet it is faid to have been fo very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for fome time, and fhelter himself in London.

It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is faid to have made his first acquaintance in the playhoufe. 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 Aage, foon distinguifhed him, if not as an extrordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. His name is printed, as the custom was in those times, amongst thofe of the other players, before fome old plays, but without any particular account of what fort of parts he used to play: and tho' 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 fhould have been much more pleased, to have learned from fome 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 first essay of a fancy like Shakespear's. Perhaps we are not to look for his beginnings, like those of other authors, among their lealt perfect writings; Art had fo little, and Nature fo large a share in what he did, that, for ought I know, the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, and had the most fire and ftrength of imagination in 'em, were the best. I would not be thought by this to mean, that his fancy was fo toofe and extravagant, as to be independent on the rule and government of judgment; but that what he thought was commonly fo great, fo juftly and rightly conceived in itself, that it wanted little or no correction, and was immediately approved by an impartial judgment at the firft fight. But tho' the order of time in which the feveral pieces were written

*The highest date of any I can yet find, is Romeo and Julier in 1597, when the author was thirty-three years old; and Richard II. and iid. in the next year, viz. the thirty-fourth of his age.

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be generally uncertain, yet there are paflages in fome few of them which feem to fix their dates. So the cho rus at the end of the fourth act of Henry V. by a com pliment very handsomely turned to the Earl of Effex, fhews the play to have been written when that Lord was general for the Queen in Ireland: and his elogy upon Queen Elifabeth, and her fucceffor King James in the latter end of his Henry VIII. is a proof of that play's being written after the acceflion of the latter of those two princes to the crown of England. Whatever the particular times of his writing were, the people of his age, who began to grow wonderfully fond of diverfions of this kind, could not but be highly pleafed to fee a genius arife amongst them of so pleasurable, fo rich a vein, and so plentifully capable of furnithing their favourite entertainments. Befides the advantages of his wit, he was in himself a good-natur'd man, of great fweetnefs in his manners, and a most agreeable companion; fo that it is no wonder if, with fo many good qualities, he made himself acquainted with the beft converfations of those times. Queen Elifabeth had feveral of his plays acted before her, and without doubt gave him many gracious marks of her favour. It is that maiden-princefs plainly whom he intends by

A fair veftal, throned by the weft. vol. i. p. 75. And that whole paffage is a compliment very properly brought in, and very handfomely applied to her. She was fo well pleated with that admirable character of Falstaff, in the two parts of Henry IV. that the commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to fhew him in love. This is faid to be the occafion of his writing The merry wives of Windfor. How well the was obeyed, the play itself is an admirable proof. Upon this occafion it may not be improper to obferve, that this part of alitaff is faid to have been written originally under the name of Oldcastle *; fome of that family being then remaining, the Queen was pleafed to command him to alter it; upon which he made ufe of Falftaff. The present offence was indeed avoided; buť I don't know whether the author may not have been See the epilogue to Henry IV. part 2. vol. iv. p. 246.

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