whatsoever. Strongly as I am impressed with this sentiment, I hasten to discuss a question in which the reputation and character and history of my great Master are necessarily and immediately involved; and I am the more anxious to seize the present moment, because, in this interval of the political warfare, the cause of Shakspeare and the Muses has a chance to be heard.
Previous to the publication of my edition of this great poet’s works in 1790, I had collected some curious circumstances relative either to himself, his family, or estate, which I appended by way of notes to Mr. Rowe’s very meagre Life of him; and which, according to the modern mode of making books, after having been properly sliced and hashed and stewed, have been served up in a late work, without any acknowledgment where the ingredients of the literary mess were found. Since that time I have pursued my inquiries on the same subject with unremitting ardour; and have amassed such an accumulation of materials for a more regular Life of our poet, as have exceeded my most sanguine expectations, and are now swelled to such a size as to
