Of some of his favourite associates at this time, and of the promised Shakspeare, we have glimpses in the letters of his friends. Boswell writes to Bishop Percy, February 1788:—“I dined at Mr. Malone’s on Wednesday, with Mr. W. G. Hamilton, Mr. Flood, Mr. Wyndham, Mr. Courtenay, &c. . . . . Malone flatters himself that his Shakspeare will be published in June. I should rather think we shall not have it till winter. Come when it may, it will be a very admirable book.”
An amusing letter from John Kemble, then in Dublin, incites the Critic to play off a trick not wholly new upon his friend Jephson, then said to be on his way to London with a poetical production in hand. This was to commit to memory the passage sent in the letter, repeat it when Jephson presented the poem, and then gravely accuse him of having stolen it from a previous writer! Theatricals appear at that moment not to have been in the ascendant in the Irish metropolis.
Dear Sir,—I am mad till I give you an occasion of surprising Jephson, when he sends you his poem, which will be, no doubt, very soon after he has shown you himself. Here is the character which he gives of Virgil, and which you may pretend to have seen before:—
position of Venus and Luna in scientific signs; but more especially the approaching great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, the two superiors in the regal sign Leo in trine also to Mercury. The square of Mercury and Mars was undoubtedly the cause of his early misfortunes, his being obliged to leave his native home, and subsequently was the cause of his pecuniary troubles; and yet, but for this restlessness, I expect the dramatic world would have probably been without the matchless writings of this illustrious Poet.”
