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 flighteft occafion, or most preffing exigence, the rigour of critical choice, and grammatical severity. That esteem which preferves. his letters, will at laft produce his difgrace; 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 the plays in queflion, unequal as they may be to the reft, were written by Shakespeare; 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 otherwise. 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 have eafily 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 fo may be obtained from hence; if otherwise, let those who raised expectations of correctness, and through negligence defeated them, be juftly 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 purpose; 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 arife, that future editors, having equally recourse to the fame copies, can challenge diftinction and preference only by genius, capacity, industry, 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

to receive it as fuch, I am amply rewarded for my trouble; if otherwife, I fhall fubmit with chearfulnefs to the cenfure which should equitably fall on an injudicious attempt; having this confolation, however, that my design amounted to no more than a defire to encourage others to think of preferving the oldest editions of the English writers, which are growing fcarcer 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.

SOME

ACCOUNT of the LIFE, &c.

Q F

Mr. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Written by Mr. ROW E.

I

T feems to be a kind of respect due to the memory of excellent men, efpecially of those whom

their wit and learning have made famous, to deliver fome account of themfelves, as well as their works, to pofterity. For this reafon, how fond do we fee fome people of difcovering any little perfonal ftory 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 enquiries. 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. 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,

He

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 regifter 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 freeschool, where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was mafter of: but the narrownefs of his circumftances, and the want of his affiftance 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 taste, and the natural bent of his own great genius (equal, if not superior, to fome of the best of theirs) would certainly have led him to read and ftudy them with fo much pleasure, 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 least fomething from them, may be an argument of his never having read them. Whether his ignorance of the ancients were a disadvantage 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 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 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 seemed 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 genius's that ever was known in dramatick 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-ftealing, 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 to revenge that ill ufage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first effay of his poetry, be loft, yet it is faid to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the profecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickthire, for fome tine, 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 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 ftage, foont diftinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. His name is printed, as

the