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GEORGE HERBERT, 117, GRAFTON-STREET.

HURST & BLACKETT, LONDON.

MDCCCLXIII.

DUBLIN: PRINTED BY ALEXANDER THOM, 87 & 88, ABBEY-STREET.

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THESE Couplets, with which all readers of English poetry are familiar, fall impressively on the ear in the stately versification of Samuel Johnson; and we can readily imagine the effect they must have produced when delivered for the first time on the boards of Drury-lane Theatre, in 1747, accompanied by the fire of David Garrick's eye, and the energy of his expression. But the sublime and the ridiculous sometimes tread closely on each other. The image in the last line, however grand in poetic elocution, becomes almost ludicrous when pictorially embodied; as may be seen in a vignette engraving which embellishes the title-page of a mawkish and almost forgotten edition of the great dramatist, superintended by the Reverend Mr. Ayscough, in 1784.

But why inflict more last words on Shakespeare, and what can possibly be said or thought on the subject, beyond a weary repetition of what has been uttered and written already in every imaginable form in which language or ideas can convey themselves? Have any discoveries come to light since yesterday? Have veracious documents been grubbed up from mouldering archives? Or are there more elaborate forgeries forthcoming to stimulate and astound VOL. LXI.-NO. CCCLXI.

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insatiable glorifiers? None that we know of. And yet we may venture to assert that all doubts are not even yet cleared up, and that the mine is far from being exhausted. Age cannot wither nor custom stale its infinite variety." The name of Shakespeare stands foremost in England's household vocabulary; and where there is a hope of even a gleam of additional light being thrown upon the incidents of his life and the emanations of his mind, a long vista of darkness may be braved in the attempt.

After all, who and what was William Shakespeare? Start not, bewildered reader; and suspend your first natural impulse to denounce the interrogatory as a monstrous platitude. It is not so readily answered as appears on the surface, and there are sound reasons for putting it broadly and plainly, as also for others that follow as corollaries. What was our Shakespeare's original calling or employment? To what vocation was he bred? Where did he live for several years after he first left Stratford? To what countries did he travel, what was the extent of his scholastic learning, and what the immediate cause of his somewhat sudden and early death? The latter event,

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