not to have made a fufficient impression on the publick. All the boxes for Mrs. Macklin's benefit, it fhould feem, were not yet taken; and the town was not quite fo anxious as might have been expected, to see this transcendent and incomparable fecular tragedy; though it was announced in the bills as not having been performed for one hundred years; though its moral, fable, and action, were all perfect and entire; though the time confumed in the drama was as little as the most rigid French critick could exact: and though the audience during the whole reprefentation would enjoy the fupreme felicity of beholding not a foreft, an open plain, or a common room, but the infide of a palace. What then was to be done? An ordinary application having failed, Spanish flies are to be tried; for though the publick might not go to see a play written in the manner of Shakspeare, they could not be fo infenfible as not to have fome curiofity about a piece, which, if the infinuations of the author's contemporaries were to be credited, was actually written by him; a play, which none of them had ever feen reprefented, and very few had read or even heard of. Mr. Barry, a principal · performer in this revived tragedy, is very commodiously taken ill; and the reprefentation, which had been announced for Friday the 22d, is deferred to Thursday the 28th, of April. Full of the new idea, the letter-writer takes up his pen; but fabricks of this kind are not eafily conftructed, fo as to be fecure on every fide from affault. However, in three days the whole ftructure was raised; and on Saturday morning the 23d of April appeared in The General Advertifer a Second Eulogy on The Lover's Melancholy, which I am now to examine, 2 This letter of the 23d of April which we are now to confider, being printed in a fubfequent page, the reader can easily turn to it. Before, however, I enter upon an examination of its contents, I will just observe, that the attention of the publick had been drawn in a peculiar manner to our author's productions by the publication of Dr. Warburton's long expected edition of his plays in the preceding year, and was ftill more ftrongly fixed on the fame object by Mr. Edwards's ingenious Canons of Criticifm, which first appeared in the month of April, 1748. Mr. Macklin begins his fecond letter with the mention of a pamphlet written in the reign of Charles the First, with this quaint title-"Old Ben's Light Heart made heavy by young John's Melancholy Lover;" and as this curious pamphlet contains "fome hiftorical anecdotes and altercations concerning Ben Jonfon, Ford, Shakspeare, and The Lover's Melancholy." he makes no doubt that a few extracts from it will "at this junclure" be acceptable to the publick. He next obferves, that Ben Jonfon from great critical language, (learning, he fhould have faid,) which was then the portion of but very few, from his merit as a poet, and his affociation with men of letters, for a confiderable time gave laws to the ftage. That old Ben was fplenetick, four, and envious; too proud of his own works, and too fevere in his cenfure of those of his contemporaries. That this arrogance raifed him many enemies, who were particularly offended by the fights and malig See Vol. III. nancies which the rigid Ben threw out against the lowly Shakspeare, "whofe fame, fince his death, as appears by the pamphlet, was grown too great for Ben's envy either to bear with or wound." To give the whole of these invectives, we are then told, would take up too much room; but among other inftances of Jonfon's ill-nature and ingratitude to Shakspeare, "who firft introduced him to the theatre and to fame," it is flated, from the pamphlet, that Ben had afferted, that Shakspeare had indeed wit and imagination, but that they were not guided by judgment, being ever fervile to raise the laughter of fools and the wonder of the ignorant; that he had little Latin, and lefs Greek and the writer of the pamphlet, as a further proof of Ben's malignity, quotes fome lines from the prologue to Every man in his humour, "To make a child new fwaddled, to proceed years, which were levelled at fome of Shakspeare's plays. The firft of the lines quoted, and above given, we are told in a note, was pointed at The Winter's Tale; but whether this note was furnished by the pamphlet or by the writer of the letter, we are left to conjecture. Whichfoever of these we are to fuppofe, the fact is undoubtedly not true; for the new-born child introduced in The Winter's Tale never does in the courfe of the play fhoot up man, being no other than the lovely Perdita. In the following lines however of that prologue, our poet is undoubtedly fneered at. So much for Shakspeare. We are now brought to The Lover's Melancholy; the extraordinary fuccefs of which, the pamphlet informs us, wounded Ben the more fenfibly, as it was brought out on the fame stage, and in the fame week, with his New Inn or Light Heart, which was damned; and as Ford, the writer of The Lover's Melancholy, was at the head of Shakspeare's partizans. The ill fuccess of the Light Heart, we are next told, fo incensed Jonson, that, when he printed his play, he defcribed it in the title-page, as a comedy never acted, but most negligently played by fome, the king's idle fervants, and more fqueamishly beheld and cenfured by others, the king's foolish fubjects; and immediately upon this, adds the letter-writer, he wrote his famous ode, "Come, leave the loathed ftage," &c. The re venge which he took on Ford, was, we are told, (from the pamphlet,) the writing an epigram upon him, in which there is an allufion, as we are informed in a note, to a character in a play of Ford's which Ben fays, Ford ftole from him.' 46 The next information which we derive from this curious pamphlet, is entirely new, no trace of it being found in the preface prefixed by the first editors to the folio edition of Shakspeare's plays in 1623, or in any other book of thofe times. This curious fact is, that John Ford, in conjunction with our poet's friends, Heminge and Condell, had the revifal of his papers after his death; and that Ben afferted, Ford's Lover's Melancholy, by the connivance of his affociates in this truft, was ftolen from those papers. This malicious charge gave birth, we are told, to many verses and epigrams, which are set forth in the pamphlet, but the letter-writer contents himself with producing two copies of thefe verfes only, to one of which is fubfcribed the name of Thomas May, and to the other these words: "Endim. Porter, the fuppofed author of thefe verses." Such is the fubftance of Mr. Macklin's fecond letter. Let us now feparately examine the parts of which it is compofed. The quaint title which the writer of this letter has given to this creature of his own imagination, (for fo I fhall now take leave to call the pamphlet,) "Old Ben's Light Heart made heavy by young John's Melancholy Loper," is, it must be acknowledged, moft happily invented, and is fo much in the manner of thofe times, that it for a long time flaggered my incredulity, and almoft convinced me of the authenticity of the piece to which it is faid to have been affixed; and not a little, without doubt, did the inventor plume himself on fo fortunate a thought. But how fhort-fighted is man! This very title, which the writer thus probably exulted in, and fuppofed would ferve him, as a charmed fhield, "And eke enchanted arms that none might pierce," is one of the moft decifive circumftances to prove his forgery. Nefcia mens hominum fati, fortifque futuræ ! Pallas te, hoc vulnere, Pallas Immolat, & poenam fcelerato ex fanguine fumit.” 3 Of all the ancient poems which Chatterton pretended to have found in the famous Bristol cheft, he wifely produced, I think, but four, that he ventured to call originals. |