elegant little work from which I have taken the foregoing quotation. It has been mentioned with a sneer by Mr. John Horne Tooke, it is true; but in a Bishop he could not see desert. It has well answered its purpose, which, as Lowth himself informs us, was not to enter into any subtile disquisition, but to give instruction to learners even of the lowest class. If therefore we have no recondite inquiry into the original sources of English, nor any attempt to restore the rights of those native burghers of our language, which have been pushed from their stools by the tyranny of modern usage; we have precepts given us, by which we shall be enabled to address ourselves with propriety to those living like ourselves in these degenerate days, although it would not supply us with the means of conversing with Hocleve or Hardinge. On the present occasion it will be of considerable use. Many readers, who could not readily appreciate the authority which is due to a quotation from Middleton or Marston, will have no difficulty in believing that a phrase might have passed without objection in the reign of Elizabeth, if they shall find a similar inaccuracy laid before them in the pages of Addison, Swift, or Pope. The grammatical anomalies which Dr. Lowth has pointed out to us in those distinguished writers, and others of established character, will be found, in their aggregate, to exceed in number all of those which the most strict critical investigation can discover in the plays of Shakspeare. In looking to the faults of construction, which have been objected to in our poet, it will appear that a great portion of them may be considered either as omissions or redundancies. Mr. Warton, in his Observations on the Fairy Queen, has attributed the great number of Spenser's ellipses to the difficulty of a stanza injudiciously chosen; and adds, that it may easily be conceived how that constraint, which occasioned superfluity, should, at the same time, be the cause of omission. A number of instances of ellipsis, in which he tells us the reader will find his omission of

the relative to be frequent, are collected in the seventh section of his second volume, and ascribed to the rapidity with which Spenser composed. "Hurried away by the impetuosity of imagination, he frequently cannot find time to attend to the niceties of construction; or to stand still and revise what he had before written, in order to avoid contradictions, inconsistencies, and repetitions." But, in truth, these elliptical expressions are not peculiar to Spenser, but perpetually occur in every writer of that age. In Shakspeare they are abundant; and Mr. Steevens, who is ready to sacrifice any thing for the purpose of supporting his new system of amended versification, is desirous of adding to their number. Not to fatigue the reader with a multiplication of passages to prove what I have described as the general usage of the time, I will content myself with the following: "Tis true I have profest it to you ingenuously, that rather than be yoked with this bridegroom [which] is appointed me, I would take up any husband almost upon any trust." Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair.

"I would fain seem, sir, and as fain endeavour,
"With duteous labour to deserve the love

"Of that good gentleman [who] shall entertain me."
Night Walker, by Fletcher and Shirley.

"To survive him,

"To me is worse than death, and therefore [I] should not "Embrace the means of my escape, though offered." Massinger's Bashful Lover.

I will add one more instance from Brathwaite, in his Contemplations, appended to his Essay on the Five Senses, 1625. Brathwaite was so far from being careless about any inaccuracies that might have crept into his text, that Mr. Haslewood considers a formal address to his readers, " upon the crrata," as a distinctive mark by which his compositions may be known; yet in one of these Contemplations, intitled, The Burial of the Old Man, he thus confusedly expresses himself, from the omission of the personal pronoun: "The

crab-fish (when the oyster doth open herself) casteth a stone into her shell, and [she] being so disabled to shut herself, becomes a prey unto the crab." Yet frequent as is the occurrence of an ellipsis in our old writers, and willing as Mr. Steevens is to introduce it, when it is not found in the original text, in order that he may cut down an Alexandrine to a verse of ten syllables, he makes no scruple of filling it up when it occurs in the oldest copy. In a note on Othello, vol. ix. p.258, Mr. Malone has justified an omission of this nature, by referring the reader to a passage in Cymbeline, where several instances of similar phraseology are collected. But Mr. Steevens does not hesitate (as he says) to call, what is styled "similar phraseology," congeniality of omissions and blunders, made by transcribers, players, or printers; and, in contradiction to his own canons of versification, contends for the introduction of an Alexandrine where there was none before. Another fault, which Mr. Warton seems to consider as peculiar to Spenser, is redundancy, of which he gives the following example:

"Him for to seeke she left her heavenly house.

"She is unnecessary in the last line, as fair Venus is the nominative case." It is surely a very allowable licence to introduce the pronoun here, instead of sending the reader nine lines back, to the commencement of the former stanza, in quest of a nominative. In order that the meaning may be more clearly understood, which, after all, is the great object of language, many writers have made a similar sacrifice of grammatical strictness. In the absolution prayer in the Liturgy, we find, “he pardoneth and absolveth," notwithstanding the Deity is the nominative case preceding; but so far removed

from the verb, that it seems to have been apprehended that some confusion might arise, without the introduction of the pronoun. Duport, in his Greek translation, has accurately followed the original English; but in that which was made in French, for the use of foreign protestants, resident in this country, an alteration has taken place; the grammar has been strictly adhered to; and the consequence is, that the meaning has been obscured. But in modern writers the same licence has been adopted, without being justified by the same necessity. Thus Pope:

"The coxcomb bird so talkative and grave,

"Who from his cage calls coxcomb, fool, or knave;

66

Though many a passenger he rightly call,

"We hold him no philosopher at all."

There are few who do not recollect the pathetick commencement of Young's Night Thoughts:

"Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep :
"He like the world his ready visit pays,

"Where fortune smiles," &c.

The first line appears as if it were merely an announcement of what is to be the subject of the following verses, the personage whose office is to be described. Let us try whether we cannot, in some measure, support a passage in the Tempest, by allowing it a similar licence:

"A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,

"Out of his charity. Who being then appointed
"Master of this design, did give us," &c.

That is, a noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo, was charitable. Who,' &c. If this mode of opening the construction of the passage should not be admitted, the reader will find in Mr. Malone's note on those lines, a number of instances from other passages in our author's plays, which are exposed to the charge of equal irregularity, which however are got rid of by Mr. Steevens, upon his usual summary maxim, that the

old copies were corrupt throughout. But is it only in Shakspeare, or even in his contemporaries, that in a long sentence the construction becomes involved? I will borrow from Dr. Lowth a quotation from Dean Swift, a writer remarkable for the correctness of his style, of which the great characteristick is a neglect of ornament and an attention to precision: "An Undertaking which, although it has failed (partly, &c. and partly, &c.), is no objection at all to an enterprize so well concerted, and with such fair probability of success." Swift's Conduct of the Allies. "That is," says Lowth," which Undertaking is no objection to an Enterprize so well concerted. That is, to itself, he means; the failure or miscarriage of which is no objection at all to it.'" But the very inaccuracy which is found in the Tempest, may be paralleled by one in Tillotson, whose reputation is not perhaps so high at the present day as formerly; but who cannot be considered as an incorrect or slovenly writer. "Who instead of going about doing good, they are perpetually intent upon doing mischief." Tillotson's Sermons, i. 18. If Shakspeare is sometimes defective in his construction, he is also sometimes redundant:

"In what enormity is Marcius poor in?"

Coriolanus, vol. xiv. p. 58.

Here Mr. Malone is the only editor who has retained the redundant in, which Mr. Steevens rejects till authority has been produced for it. In a note on Romeo and Juliet, the reader will find ample authority produced, not from "humourists, sectaries, or buffoons," or even from John Stowe the tailor; but from our old translation of the Scriptures, which, we are certain, underwent a careful revision in its passage through the press, and from manuscript letters of the time of Elizabeth. Here again we shall find that the lax phraseology of our ancestors may be kept in countenance by writers of acknowledged rank in a succeed