had been on him,—­“Of this play, the heavy or tragic part is very natural and pleasing; but the comic scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have more labor than elegance,”—­his remark would have been quite as sonorous, and just a little nearer the truth.  For my own part, I think there is nothing finer in all Shakspeare than the interview between Angelo and Isabella, in the Second Act, or that exquisite outburst of the latter, afterward, “Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,” which is a line the sugar of which you can sensibly taste as you read it.  Incledon used to wish that his old music-master could come down from heaven to Norwich, and could take the coach up to London to hear that d—­d Jew sing,—­referring thus civilly to the respectable John Braham.  I have sometimes wished that Shakspeare could make a similar descent, and face his critics.  Ah! how much he could tell us over a single bottle of Rosa Solis at some new “Mermaid” extemporized for the occasion!  What wild work would he make with the commentators long before we had exhausted the ordinate cups! and how, after we had come to the inordinate, would he be with difficulty prevented from marching at once to break the windows of his latest glossator!  If anything could make one sick of “the next age,” it would be the shabby treatment which the Avonian has received.  I do not wonder that the illustrious authors of “Salmagundi” said,—­“We bequeathe our first volume to future generations,—­and much good may it do them!  Heaven grant they may be able to read it!” Seeing that contemporary fame is the most profitable,—­that you can eat it, and drink it, and wear it upon your back,—­I own that it is the kind for which I have the most absolute partiality.  It is surely better to be spoken well of by your neighbors, who do know you, than by those who do not know you, and who, if they commend, may do so by sheer accident.

You never heard of Mr. Horden, of Charles Knipe, of Thomas Lupon, of Edward Revet?  Great men all, in their day!  So there was Mr. John Smith,—­clarum et venerabile nomen!—­who in 1677 wrote a comedy called “Cytherea; or, the Enamoring Girdle.”  So there was Mr. Swinney, who wrote one play called “The Quacks.”  So there was Mr. John Tutchin, 1685, who wrote “The Unfortunate Shepherd.”  So there is Mr. William Smith, Mr. H. Smith, author of “The Princess of Parma,” and Mr. Edmund Smith, 1710, author of “Phedra and Hippolytus,” who is buried in Wiltshire, under a Latin inscription as long as my arm.  There is Thomas Yalden, D.D., 1690, who helped Dryden and Congreve in the translation of Ovid, who wrote a Hymn to Morning, commencing vigorously thus:—­

  “Parent of Day! whose beauteous beams of light
  Sprang from the darksome womb of night!”—­

and who was a great friend of Addison, which is the best I know of him.  He might have been, like Sir Philip Sidney, “scholar, soldier, lover, saint,”—­for Doctors of Divinity have been all four,—­but I declare that I have told you all I have learned about him.