that Henry, Earl of Southampton, was admitted to the degree of B.A. in 1589, and proceeded no farther; and luckily examining the Book of Matriculations, I at last fell upon ‘Hen. Comes Southampton, impubes, 12 an°. of St. John’s College, Dec. 11, 1585.’ Here we have his age as well as college. Essex was of Trin. June 1, 1579.
***
“Whatever you may have fancied, I solemnly declare to you that I always meant to send you my notes on the Henrys, if I could find them, and I flattered myself they might be among some papers at Canterbury. I cannot yet find them, and you want no assistance. As I remember, you have some of my arguments but not all. I have supposed the plays—originally Marlowe’s, and altered after his death by Shakspeare; this I argued from style and manner; with many quotations from passages contradictory to others in Shakspeare’s genuine plays, and others clashing in the Henrys themselves, which show different hands,” &c. &c.
Malone’s aim at minute correctness we have seen excited an occasional smile among the more fly-along order of readers and writers. Occasionally he was compelled to be exact, in consequence of being watched. Steevens sometimes sought to find him tripping. Hence the origin of the following note to Isaac Reed, with which I am obliged from the stores of Mr. J. H. Anderdon.
“My dear Sir,—In a note on Dodsley’s Preface to the Old Plays, p. 11, speaking of the Curtain
