Con. Dead!

Fred.

Even so. Last night Count Lindorf died. Countess. No, no, he lives! the real Count Lindorf lives! My son! my son! my own, my very son! Thou, for whose sake I have endured to live In prison and in sorrow-thou art mine, My Theodore! In the face of all the world I will proclaim thee rightful Count of Lindorf. The. Mother! I do not ask if this be real, My heart has always claim'd thee. Yes; I am Thy son, thy very son.

Ber.

What then is she?

Countess.

And the poor Bertha

My daughter, still my daughter.

The. Bertha, my sister!

Countess.

No; thy wife. Will that

Please thee as well? And our dear Conrade's child.

Con. My own sweet child.

Countess.

My son, thy speaking eyes

Demand my story. Briefly let me tell

A grief which eighteen years have left as fresh
As yesterday. Thy father was a man

Born to lead all hearts captive. Such he was

As thou art now. Look at the features, Frederick-
The shape, the air.

Countess. I loved him-we were in our bridal year— Oh, how I loved him! So did all the world,

Except his envious brother. They went forth

Together, at the break of day, to hunt

Here in this very forest; and at eve,

One-only one-return'd. Mine-Mine-O God!
The agony, the frightful agony.

When he at last was brought!-O God!

The.

My mother!
Countess. Some tale was told of direful accident-
Would that I could believe! But from that hour
Peace, rest, and appetite, and natural smiles,
Forsook the conscious fratricide-Oh, guilt
Hath well avenged us! But, ere yet the flush
Of bold triumphant crime had paled to fear
And dark remorse, did Conrade overhear-
For I was great of thee, my Theodore,
And grief and horror had brought on my pains-
This Lindorf bribed a ruffian to secure
My infant, if a male. Thou, sweetest Bertha,
A new-born innocent babe, wert in the castle;
And he, and my kind nurse, and she the kindest
And faithfullest of all, thy blessed mother,
Contrived, I scarcely conscious, to exchange
My boy for his fair girl.-A boundless debt
We owe thee, Conrade.

Con.

Pay it to my Bertha.

The. She is herself that debt! What was the life Of fifty, such as I, compared to Bertha?

A paltry boon, scarce worth my thanks, dear father!
She is the treasure! She-

Theodore, my son,

How proud I am of that unwonted word!

Let us go meet the Baron. Bertha, Conrade,

Daughter and friend, come with me; this kind cousin
Must see how rich I am. My own dear son!

[Exeunt.

ON SPENSER'S SUPPOSED ACQUAINTANCE WITH SHAKSPEARE.

Few of our readers are aware, we dare say, of the late launch of Mr. Malone's Shakspeare, in twenty-one thick 8vo. volumes; but a Shakspearian feels it to his cost. We are not so wealthy as to deem 12. 12s. a trifle for the mere additions made by Mr. Malone, to the late Variorum Shakspeare; nor can a plain man's library contain twice twenty-one volumes on the same subject, without inconvenience. The booksellers should have given us the additional notes and other amplifications in two or three volumes of appendix; and when a new edition of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare was required, which is said to be even now the case, they might then have invested the body corporate with the shreds and patches of Mr. Malone's latest accumulation. Perhaps this may be done hereafter; for it is unreasonable to expect, that when a man calls for a few more nuts to crack over his wine, he should be compelled to pay for an additional dinner.

So far as we have looked over the novelties of this last work, we must confess that our expectation is not gratified by finding any discovery made, worthy of the ingenuity and perseverance of Mr. Malone; but the investigation is, no doubt, barren, from the exhaustion of materials; and nothing new appears, because research has reached the bot

tom of the sack. If this should be so, how happy a circumstance will it prove for the real admirers of Shakspeare; they may henceforth quote beauties, without fear of being detected in admiring a faulty reading; for it is a fact, that many of the passages which make the best stuff for quotation, are most closely allied to absurdity, either in conception or expression; and if they were now presented to the world, for the first time, as the production of a living poet, he would scarcely survive the "bolts" which would be shot at him.

But if research be at an end, we are still not out of jeopardy, for conjecture is more alive than ever. Her wings being no longer clipped to keep her on the ground with her companion, she may now beat the thin air with them in the regions of imagination. We have proof of this excursiveness in the work before us, where Mr. Malone introduces Spenser's works, and comments on his allusions with somewhat less felicity than he was wont. He finds that though" our pleasaunt Willy who is dead of late," could not be Shakspeare, he was, doubtless, John Lyly, the dramatic poet, the first letter of his name being altered, according to the conceited custom of that age; that for the same reason, Lobbin stands for Robin (Robert Dudley),

266

On Spenser's supposed Acquaintance with Shakspeare.

the Earl of Leicester; that Dido
means an illegitimate daughter of the
Earl's, by Douglas Howard, the wi-
dow of the Earl of Sheffield. Dido
was born" perhaps " in 1571, died,
"it may be presumed," in 1578,
and, as in Virgil she is called also
Elisa, was christened, "I appre-
probably after
hend," Elizabeth, "
the Queen." A former conjecturer
had guessed that the far-famed Ro-
salinde, was Rose Linde, because a
family of the name of Linde resided
in Kent, in the time of Henry VI.
Mr. Malone finds that another fa-
mily, named Horden, lived in the
same county, in the same king's
reign; and with greater ability of
scent, he detects Rosalinde in the
anagram of Elisa Ordn. This is all
we know of either of them, and all
that our ingenious commentators
condescend to tell us of a woman so
renowned for her beauty and accom-
plishments. It is dangerous to ob-
ject to these discoveries; for the title
of "shallow buffoons, and half-wit-
ted scoffers," is prepared beforehand
for the punishment of all unbelievers.
After enumerating many poets and
eminent persons of both sexes, who
are supposed to be alluded to by
Spenser, in his Tears of the Muses,
and Colin Clout's Come Home A
gain, in several of which he coin-
cides with Mr. Todd,-Mr. Malone
brings in another improvement of his
own, conceiving Ætion, in the latter
poem, to shadow forth obscurely, but
"unquestionably," the name of Shak-
speare. He has, certainly, more ap-
parent reason with him than Mr.
Todd, who imagines Drayton to be
intended by the lines:

And then, though last, not least, is Ætion,
A gentler shepheard may no where be
found;
Whose muse, full of high thoughts' in-

vention,

Doth, like himself, heroically sound.

Having made these discoveries, which fill no less than 112 pages of the Life of Shakspeare, Mr. Malone adds: "For this long, but, I trust not wholly uninteresting, disquisition, no apology is necessary. Every poetical reader, I am confident, will be gratified by an endeavour to pluck out the heart of this mystery,' to penetrate the thick veil of words,'

[Sept.

under which, for more than two cen-
turies, the characters and produc-
tions of so many ingenious men have
been concealed; and will feel no less
satisfaction than I have done, on dis-
covering, that, though Shakspeare
was not the comick writer eulogized
by the author of the Tears of the
Muses, at a time when his name was
scarcely known in the world, he yet,
afterwards, was duly appreciated by
his illustrious and amiable contem-
porary; who in talents and virtues
more nearly resembled Shakspeare,
than did any writer of that age; and
who, we find, at a very early period
of our great poet's dramatic life, had
a just and high sense of his trans-
cendent merits." Vol. II. p. 279.

We are sorry that we cannot feel the satisfaction which our warmhearted commentator must have experienced, when he penned this concluding paragraph. He sits down happy, with having accomplished a great undertaking, and invites his poetical readers to repose with him ; but facts, substantial facts, rise up and push us from our stools. We have very little confidence generally in the explications which have been heretofore given of Spenser's meaning; but in Mr. Malone's opinion, that the name of Ætion is a mask for Shakspeare, we cannot for a moment agree. Our reasons are neither few, nor soon stated; but perhaps the reader will grant us his patience while we produce them.

The poem of Colin Clout's Come Home Again, in which the above lines appear, was dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh, on the 27th of De cember, 1591. Now we have not the least evidence adduced by any of his biographers, to show that Shakspeare was known as a writer at that time. The earliest supposed allusion to him is in Greene's Groatsworthe of Witte, published between September and December, 1592, and written when Greene was on his death-hed: advising some of his " fellow scollers about this city" to " let these apes,' the players, imitate only their "past excellence," and never more acquaint them with their "admired inven"Yes, trust them tions," he says, not, for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a play

"

with Shakspeare

er's hide, supposes he is as well able
to bombast out a blank verse as the
best of you; and being an absolute
Johannes factotum, is in his own con-
ceit the only Shake-scene in a coun-
try." If this means Shakspeare, as
it probably may, it shows great dis-
cernment in Greene thus to warn his
friends beforehand of his rising great-
ness; but it also proves that Shak-
speare was only just then venturing
to bombast out a few lines of blank
verse, that he was a player by pro-
fession, and not a writer, a factotum,
because he united both offices, and
had doubtless the temerity to try
his hand at mending one of Greene's
own plays. We may take another
occasion to show that this was ac-
tually done by Shakspeare. Thus his
talent was felt and estimated, we
allow, as early as the autumn of 1592
--but then only by those who had so
intimate a connexion with the ma-
nagement of the theatre, as to know
what improvements were made by
him in the plays which they pro-
duced. In the following year, 1593,
Shakspeare publicly announced his
pretensions to the title of a poet, by
printing his poem of Venus and A-
donis, which he says, in his dedica-
tion of it to the Earl of Southamp-
ton, is the first heir of his invention;
meaning, of course, his first original
performance; and he vows to take ad-
vantage of all idle hours, till he have
honoured him with some graver la-
bour. This poem was entered on
the books of the Stationers' Company,
in April, 1593; and as it was then
declared by the author to be his
first and gravest labour, Spenser,
we may be certain, could not mean
to commend the same writer for his
muse full of high thoughts' inven-
tion," so early as December, 1591.
Mr. Malone and Mr. Todd are so
well aware of this, that they attempt
to find an error in the date of Spen-
ser's dedication; but the arguments
they adduce for it are all incompetent
to shake the fact, as will be shown,
when we come to speak of the poem
of Colin Clout.

There was another poet living at
that time, famous and noble, and
every way proper to be designated
by the verse in question, to whom
Spenser, in our opinion, alluded; and
if Mr. Malone's judgment had not

This was the opinion Sir Philip Sydney entertained of the genius of Sackville; but the words of Spenser himself vouch for our application of the character of Ætion to that nobleman. Prefixed to the Fairy Queen, and written fortunately at the time (1590) when we may most fairly compare the description it gives of Sackville, with that under the name of Ætion, is the following sonnet. To the Right Honourable the Lord of Buckhurst, one of Her Majestie's Privie Counsell.

In vain I think, Right Honourable Lord, By this rude rhyme to memorize thy