of the manuscripts for me; and am sorry to think I should leave town without a valedictory gripe of your hand; but Mr. Sheridan had me in waiting from one at noon till almost one the next morning, and as I was obliged to be in my chaise by four, prevented my making my last compliments to all my other friends. We did a good deal of business at last, however, and I passed a very agreeable day. We should have had a very triumphant season but for my unfortunate illness which has prevented our acting our most attractive plays—Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, &c. Huzza! Shakspeare for ever!
Pray give my compliments to Jephson; and believe me your obliged and faithful servant,
Lord Charlemont, as usual, pursues his friend for acquisitions in poetry, the drama, and criticism, with that zeal which is so pleasant to witness in one who, though but an amateur, gives his hours to the pursuit.
He writes for a title-page for Turberville’s poems[1] in Malone’s hand-writing from the want of one in print; for one of Shirley’s plays, in which his set is deficient; for a volume of Green’s works; and a second copy of the plays attributed to Shakspeare. “I wish to have them, as I do everything that bore that sacred name. . . . My MS. plays are all of them written in different hands, and from many interlineations and corrections, are likely to be the original copies. I believe Lady Mob has been mistaken for Lady Moth. The mistake however is not
- ↑ A note of Malone in Warton’s History of Poetry, vol. iii. p. 383, alludes to some comic tales of this writer, from whom, it is supposed, Shakspeare took the fable of Much Ado about Nothing. He is also supposed to be (instead of Fairfax) the first translator of Tasso: p. 392, v. iii. of the same work. Ed. 1824.
