time, taken up by Thomas Coxeter, of whom I know nothing more than is delivered by Mr. Egerton Brydges, in his useful and ingenious additions to the Theatrum Poetarum: "He was born of an ancient and respectable family, at Lechlade, in Gloucestershire, in 1689, and educated at Trinity College, Oxford, where he wore a civilian's gown, and about 1710, abandoning the civil law, and every other profession, came to London. Here continuing without any settled purpose, he became acquainted with booksellers and authors, and amassed materials for a biography of our old poets. He had a curious collection of old plays, and was the first who formed the scheme adopted by Dødsley, of publishing a selection of them," &c.

ສ

Warton too calls Coxeter a faithful and industrious amasser of our old English lite

but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." Whoever would add to these the qualities of simplicity, purity, sweetness, and strength, must devote his hours to the study of Massinger.

** I take the offered opportunity to express my thanks to this gentleman for the obliging manner in which he transmitted to me the manuscript notes of Oldys and others, copied into his edition of Langbaine, formerly in the possession of Mr. Steevens.

rature, and this praise, whatever be its worth, is all that can be fairly said to belong to him :* as an editor he is miserably deficient; though it appears that he was not without assistance which, in other hands, might have been turned to some account. "When I left London," says the accurate and ingenious Oldys, "in the year 1724, to reside in Yorkshire, I left in the care of the Rev. Mr. Burridge's family, with whom I had several years lodged, amongst many other books, a copy of this Langbaine, in which I had written several notes and references to further the knowledge of these poets. When I returned to London in 1730, I understood my books had been dispersed; and afterwards becoming acquainted with Mr. Coxeter, I found that he had bought my Langbaine of a bookseller, as he was a great collector of plays and poetical books. This must have been of

* Johnson told Boswell that "a Mr. Coxeter, whom he knew, had collected about five hundred volumes of poets whose works were most known; but that, upon his death, Tom Osborne bought them, and they were dispersed, which he thought a pity; as it was curious to see any series complete, and in every volume of poems something good might be found." Boswell's Life, &c. Vol. II. p. 452.

service to him, and he has kept it so carefully from my sight, that I never could have the opportunity of transcribing into this I am now writing, the notes I had collected in that. Whether I had entered any remarks upon Massinger, I remember not; but he had communications from me concerning him, when he was undertaking to give us a new edition of his plays, which is not published yet. He (Mr. Coxeter) died on the 10th (or 19th, I cannot tell which) of April, being Easter Sunday, 1747, of a fever which grew from a cold he caught at an auction of books over Exeter Change, or by sitting up late at the tavern afterwards.'

399

On the death of Coxeter, his collections for the purposed edition of Massinger fell into the hands of a bookseller of the name of Dell, who gave them to the world in 1759. From the publisher's preface it appears that Coxeter did not live to complete his design. "The late ingenious Mr. Coxeter," he says, "had corrected and collated all the various editions; and, if I may judge from his

3

Manuscript notes on Langbaine, in the British

Museum.

This is also asserted in the title-page: but it is not so.

copies, he had spared no diligence and care to make them as correct as possible. Several ingenious observations and notes he had likewise prepared for his intended edition, which are all inserted in the present. Had he lived to have completed his design, I dare say he would have added many more, and that his work would have met with a very favourable reception from every person of true taste and genius."

As Dell professes to have followed Coxeter's papers, and given all his notes, we may form no inadequate idea of what the edition would have been. Though educated at the University, Coxeter exhibits no proofs of literature. To critical sagacity he has not the smallest pretension; his conjectures are void alike of ingenuity and probability, and his historical references at once puerile and incorrect. Even his parallel passages (the easiest part of an editor's labour) are more calculated to produce a smile at the collector's expense, than to illustrate his author; while every page of his work bears the strongest impression of imbecility. The praise of fidelity may be allowed him; but in doing this, the unfortunate Dell must be charged (how

justly I know not) with the innumerable errours which over-run and deform the edition. I need not inform those who are conversant with old copies, that the printers were less attentive to the measure of the original, than to filling up the line, and saving their paper: this Coxeter attempted to remedy; his success, however, was but partial; his vigilance relaxed, or his ear failed him, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of verses are given in the cacophanous and unmetrical state in which they appear in the early editions. A few palpable blunders are removed, others, not less remarkable, are continued, and where a word is altered, under the idea of improving the sense, it is almost invariably for the worse. Upon the whole, Massinger appeared to less advantage than in the old copies.

Two years afterwards, (1761,) a second edition' of this work was published by Mr.

5 A second edition] So, at least, it insinuates: but Mr. Waldron, of Drury Lane Theatre, (a most friendly and ingenious man, to whose small but curious library I am much indebted,) who is better acquainted with the adroitness of booksellers than I pretend to be, informs Ime that it is only Dell's with a new title-page.