situation at the commencement of his career.  He found only a few indifferent models, and yet these met with the most favourable reception, because men are never difficult to please in the novelty of an art before their taste has become fastidious from choice and abundance.  Must not this situation have had its influence on him before he learned to make higher demands on himself, and by digging deeper in his own mind, discovered the richest veins of a noble metal?  It is even highly probable that he must have made several failures before getting into the right path.  Genius is in a certain sense infallible, and has nothing to learn; but art is to be learned, and must be acquired by practice and experience.  In Shakespeare’s acknowledged works we find hardly any traces of his apprenticeship, and yet an apprenticeship he certainly had.  This every artist must have, and especially in a period where he has not before him the example of a school already formed.  I consider it as extremely probable, that Shakespeare began to write for the theatre at a much earlier period than the one which is generally stated, namely, not till after the year 1590.  It appears that, as early as the year 1584, when only twenty years of age, he had left his paternal home and repaired to London.  Can we imagine that such an active head would remain idle for six whole years without making any attempt to emerge by his talents from an uncongenial situation?  That in the dedication of the poem of Venus and Adonis he calls it “the first heir of his invention”, proves nothing against the supposition.  It was the first which he printed; he might have composed it at an earlier period; perhaps, also, he did not include theatrical labours, as they then possessed but little literary dignity.  The earlier Shakespeare began to compose for the theatre, the less are we enabled to consider the immaturity and imperfection of a work as a proof of its spuriousness in opposition to historical evidence, if we only find in it prominent features of his mind.  Several of the works rejected as spurious may still have been produced in the period betwixt Titus Andronicus and the earliest of the acknowledged pieces.

’At last, Steevens published seven pieces ascribed to Shakespeare in two supplementary volumes.  It is to be remarked, that they all appeared in print in Shakespeare’s lifetime, with his name prefixed at full length.  They are the following: 

’1.  LOCRINE.  The proofs of the genuineness of this piece are not altogether unambiguous; the grounds for doubt, on the other hand, are entitled to attention.  However, this question is immediately connected with that respecting Titus Andronicus, and must be at the same time resolved in the affirmative or negative.