in one, the middle words are omitted; in the other, the middle line.

The plan, and the deviations from it, being thus imparted, it remains that the reader be made acquainted with the determinate force of certain new marks peculiar to this work: their most frequent ufe is in the drama, to which therefore he will have recourfe for examples; fome too are in the ballad, which is alfo dramatic. In the first place, there feem'd to be much want of a particular note of punctuation to distinguish irony; which is often fo delicately couch'd as to escape the notice even of the attentive reader, and betray him into error: fuch a note is therefore introduc'd; being a point ranging with the top of the letter, as the full stop is a point ranging with the bottom: That it is already a note of punctuation in another language is so far from a just objection, that it ought rather enforce a use of it in our own. A fimilar arrangement of a mark, call'd by the printers a dash or break, affords a new diftinction: This in present usage is fingle, and put always in the middle in this work it is otherwise; ranging fometimes with the top, and then it serves the purposes to which it has been hitherto affign'd; and fometimes with the bottom, and has a new fignification: All dramatic works abound in fingle speeches that pafs from one perfon to another, often to very many; which cannot be understood, unless this point likewise be known and attended to the mark spoken of is destin'd to this

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fervice; wherever it occurs, it denotes conftantly a change of the addrefs; if it be at all ambiguous to whom the words are spoken, a name is added; but it is in moft cafes fufficient to mark where the change begins, and where it ends, if not with the fpeech; for to perfons of the leaft intelligence the context will speak the rest. A third mark is, the crofs This, when it has one bar only, is fignificant of a thing fhown or pointed to; when two, of a thing deliver'd: and they are feverally plac'd exactly at the very word at which it is proper the pointing be made, or the delivery should take effect. The laft, and moft extenfively useful, of the marks introduc'd is, the double inverted comma; which do conftantly and invariably denote in this work that the words they are prefix'd to are fpoke apart or afide, and have no other fignification whatsoever. It is hop'd, that when these new-invented marks are a little confider'd, they will be found by the candid and discerning to be no improper fubftitutes to those marginal directions that have hitherto obtain'd; which are both a blemish to the page they ftand in, and inadequate to the end propos'd.

And thus much of the work in general: Something must now be added concerning each of the poems of which it is compos'd, and the reader fhall then be difmiff'd to receive his better entertainment from them. The Ballad was certainly written in the beginning of the fixteenth century, and not

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fooner: the curious in these matters, who shall conceive a doubt of what is here afferted through remembrance of what he has seen advanc'd by a poet of late days, is desir'd to look into the works of the great Sir Thomas More, and, particularly, into a poem that stands at the head of them, and from thence receive conviction; if fameness of rythmus, fameness of orthography, and a very near affinity of words and phrases, be capable of giving it. The Induction will ftand in need of fomewhat a larger preface, to let the reader into the circumftances that produc'd it: He is then to know, that the book it is taken from is divided into two parts; in the fecond of which ftands this poem, an induction or introduction to the particular hiftory of Henry duke of Buckingham, the accomplice and victim of the third Richard: but it was intended by the author, that it fhould be a general introduction to all the histories; and that the book should be new caft, beginning with this complaint of Buckingham, and going backward to the conqueft: which intention of his was never executed, fo that the poem comes in aukwardly enough towards the middle of the fecond part: The first part was printed by itself in the year 1559; and again in 1563, with addition of the second part; and in the interval between those years was the Induction compos'd: Gorboduc (call'd, in the first edition of it, the tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex) was written within the fame period, by this author, Sackvile, and

Thomas Norton, jointly. A very great liberty has been taken with this poem by the editor, for which it is proper he should make fome apology: what he has done is nothing less than the throwing out of four entire ftanzas, and parcel of a fifth; his reason, for that they were so weak, and disgrac'd with other blemishes, that he fear'd they would difcourage the reader from perusal of what remains, and prepossess him against the whole: the connection is not deftroy'd by the omiffion; and who fhall think it a defect may easily cure it from fome old edition, which are nothing fcarce. The poem that follows will ftand in danger of running into a like difgrace with the reader, by reason of that indelicacy which is but too visible in many parts of it, unless he be firft warn'd that it was the general vice of the author's time, and fhall from that confideration be kindly induc'd to make some allowances: It is likewise a pofthumous work, (appearing firft in that edition which is at the head of those the editor has confulted) as is evident, among other circumstances, from the following verfes, parcel of a collection which preceed the poem;

Encomium of the Wife a Widow.

This perfect creature, to the eastern use,

liv'd, whilst a wife, retir'd from common fhow; not that her lover fear'd the least abuse, but, with the wiseft, knew it fitter so: fince, fall'n a widow, and a zealous one, she would have sacrific'd herself agen;

but, importun'd to life, is now alone

lov'd, woo'd, admir'd, by all wise fingle men : which &c.

And it's being a pofthumous work will account for another imperfection which is noted in the present edition: two of the ftanzas (viz. the last in p. 11, and the second in p. 12.) would, perhaps, have been expung'd by the author, had he fent it to the prefs himself they are here put between hooks, fignifying rejection; and it is recommended to the reader to confider, whether, by fo doing, that member of the poem is not abundantly clearer. The pieces that have been mention'd are thrown together, and made a firft part, with a view to the reader's further gratification; that he may, with the greater convenience, have the pleasure of observing in them the different ftate of our language at the beginning, middle, and end, of one and the fame century. But what shall be faid of the poem that conftitutes the fecond part? or how fhall the curiofity be fatiffy'd, which it is probable may have been rais'd by the great Name inferted in the title - page? That it was indeed written by SHAKESPEARE, it cannot be faid with candour that there is any external evidence at all: fomething of proof arises from resemblance between the ftile of his earlier performances and of the work in question; and a more conclufive one yet from confideration of the time it appear'd in, in which there was no known writer equal to fuch a play the fable of it B