and affirmations in questions of this kind go for little. The evidence on which it has been assigned by the master-critics in this department, Malone and Chalmers, to a late period is of an entirely different character, and of that kind by which I venture to say that questions of this nature can be alone determined. Leaving, then, the preceding remarks to produce what effect they may on the mind of the reader, I proceed to evidence of a kind similar to that which has been in some instances so successfully used in these inquiries.

The Tempest never having been printed till it was included in the great collection of the plays in 1623, we have no assistance from that which is the best of all evidence, dates in title-pages or entries in the books of the Company of Stationers. We have no notice of its being represented in any diary or account-book of the time previous to the year 1611, in which year on All-Hallows-Night it was performed at court.*

Were none but plays that were new performed at court, this would be a decisive proof of the late date of The Tempest, and it would be in vain to contend against it; but the same volume which affords us the information that this play was represented in 1611 shews us also that The Merchant of Venice was represented at court in 1605, when it had been many years upon the stage, and that other plays, not new, were represented in the same presence also.

All, therefore, that this entry proves is that The Tempest existed under that name in 1611, leaving the date of its composition open to inquiry.

tinct reason." Ib. As far as I can find, no distinct and intelligible reason for the opinion of the late date of this play has ever been given, except the mistaken one of Malone and Chalmers, another of Mr. Collier, and a third of a Quarterly Reviewer, all of which will be noticed hereafter.

* Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court; by P. Cunningham; printed for the Shakespeare Society, 8vo. 1842, p. 210.

In support of the early date of this play, I beg first to draw attention to the Epilogue, in which the Author speaks for himself in the character of Prospero.

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have 's mine own;
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,

I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got,
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell:
But release me from my bands,
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits t'enforce, art to inchant;
And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer;

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself, and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,

Let your indulgence set me free!

This does not sound to me like an address to an audience by a dramatic author who had produced play after play through a long series of years with unexampled success, and who, at the time when he is supposed to have written these supplicatory and deprecatory lines, had retired to the town in which he was born to enjoy the independence which had grown out of that success, and who was also placed by it in a position to forbear, if he chose, to submit himself to public censure at all they are rather lines which we should expect from a new candidate for dramatic fame,-one who was anxious about his success, and distrustful and diffident of his powers. If the word modesty be whispered, I reply, that when the public have accorded a large mede of praise modesty expresses itself by silence, not by language, which, opposed as this was to the public voice, would offend by the appearance of affec

tation which it could not but wear. Assume that The Tempest, the first in place in the collection of his works, was also the first, or nearly the first, of the plays in which he depended on himself, and neither imped out the feebler efforts of other men, nor suffered himself to be shackled by the bondage of rhyme, and this Epilogue becomes natural, consistent, and proper.

The examination of the kind of subjects on which Shakespeare employed himself at different periods of his dramatic life leads to the same conclusion. It was in the earlier period of his life, which, for the sake of convenience, we will call the period before the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, that he produced nearly all the plays which belong to the class to which The Tempest belongs, the romantic comedies. All's Well that Ends Well and The Winter's Tale are the only plays of this class that can by any means admit of being referred to the later period; and it is remarkable that these two plays are extremely deficient of indications, either internal or from without, of the time at which they were produced. The other romantic comedies are all decidedly of the earlier period; while, on the other hand, it is equally certain that in the later period of his life he was, for the most part, employed upon themes of a very different character. It was then that he took for his heroes the veritable and eminent personages of authentic history,—Cæsar, Anthony, and Coriolanus, or royal personages in history less authentic, Cymbeline, Lear, and Macbeth. Then, too, he produced his Timon and Troilus, both full of high moral and political wisdom, the most philosophic of all his plays. If, then, we suppose The Tempest to have been produced in the later period of his life, we must suppose that for once he deserts those lofty themes, closes Plutarch, and returns to his books of Italian fable and romance. He may undoubtedly have done so; but, when

we have a comedy of uncertain date before us the antecedent probability is that it belongs to the early period of his life; just as if a new tragedy were found that we knew to be Shakespeare's, having for its principal character one of the heroes of Greek or Roman story, we should, previously to any inquiry, refer it to the period when he produced his Julius Cæsar, or his Troilus. Nothing is more evident than that Shakespeare produced his dramas in clusters. His English histories were evidently for the most part produced in quick succession, and are neutral productions in respect of this argument: so also is Hamlet.

But in questions of this kind we require particular and special evidence, rather than that which arises out of comprehensive views of the author's manner, and to that I now proceed.

In all questions on the chronological order there is no testimony of greater importance than the following passage contained in A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets:

As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage. For comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labours Lost, his Love Labours Won, his Midsummer Night's Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard the Second, Richard the Third, Henry the Fourth, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. p. 282.

The treatise in which this passage occurs is found in a work entitled Palladis Tamia, or Wit's Treasury, of which a divine, Francis Meres, a Lincolnshire man, was the author, who describes himself as Master of Arts of both Universities, and who has done more ample justice to our English poets, and to Shakespeare in particular, than might have been expected from a professed scholar, writing for the use of persons engaged in classical studies. This work is a

collection of similes gathered for the benefit of young scholars, tasked to the production of school or college themes.* But the material point in reference to the present inquiry is the year in which this work appeared, and the date 1598 is found upon the title-page.

Here, then, we have distinct evidence from a contemporary that in 1598 there were twelve plays attributed to Shakespeare, six comedies and six tragedies: the question is, whether The Tempest is one of them.

Eleven of the twelve have descended to our time with the titles by which Meres calls them. There remains a twelfth which we have not received under the title by which it was known to Meres-Love Labours Won: the next question is, whether this play is not The Tempest.

If evidence could be produced that Love Labours Won was

*This book, which is one of great importance in all inquiries that relate either to the order of time in which the plays were composed, or to the position in which Shakespeare stood in the thirty-third or thirty-fourth year of his age among the men of genius of the time, is one of a series, in the preparation of which Meres, Bodenham, and Allot were the persons concerned. First appeared Politeuphuia, Wit's Commonwealth. This consisted of Admonitions and Sentences. Next came Meres' book of Similes; then a book of Examples, having for its title Wit's Theatre of the Little World; and lastly, Passages from the English Poets, apt for the use of Themes, of which there were two, appearing at nearly the same time, entitled England's Parnassus, and Belvidere, or the Garden of the Muses. Enyland's Helicon, published in the same year, 1600, is a different kind of book, being a collection of complete pastoral and lyrical pieces.

Dr. Farmer, Warton, and, following them, Sir Egerton Brydges and others, have intimated that this Allot is the person of that name who was the publisher of the Second Folio, in 1632; but this could not be. Both were named Robert; but Robert Allot the stationer was a mere child in 1600, if then born. It was more probably an uncle of his, Robert Allot, who was Fellow of St. John's college, Cambridge, and Linacre Professor of Physic. The stationer was one of the younger sons of an Edward Allot, of Crigleston, near Wakefield, in Yorkshire, and had a brother Edward Allot, who was a Bachelor of Medicine of the University of Cambridge, and " practitioner of chirurgery," who died June 6, 1636, aged 33, and was buried in St. Peter's church, Nottingham, with some English verses over his grave.