United States or Guyana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It has, since 1773, been greatly augmented; and though Dr Johnson with justice observed, that, by losing Goldsmith, Garrick, Nugent, Chamier, Beauclerk, we had lost what would make an eminent club, yet when I mention, as an accession, Mr Fox, Dr George Fordyce, Sir Charles Bunbury, Lord Offory, Mr Gibbon, Dr Adam Smith, Mr R. B. Sheridan, the Bishops of Kilaloe and St Asaph, Dean Marlay, Mr Steevens, Mr Dunning, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr Scott of the Commons, Earl Spencer, Mr Windham of Norfolk, Lord Elliot, Mr Malone, Dr Joseph Warton, the Rev.
For the year 1720, he is no otherwise below Theobald, Hanmer, Capell, Warburton, or even Johnson, than as they are successively below each other, and all of them as to accuracy below Steevens, as he again was below Malone and Read. The gains from Shakspeare would hardly counterbalance the loss which Pope sustained this year from the South Sea Bubble.
Twice or thrice we had observed, that if Shakspeare were quoted, that paper turned out not to be Addison's; and at length, by express examination, we ascertained the curious fact, that Addison has never in one instance quoted or made any reference to Shakspeare. But was this, as Steevens most disingenuously pretends, to be taken as an exponent of the public feeling towards Shakspeare?
I heard this admiration emphatically expressed the other day by one of the foremost and most justly famous of American authors; but, unlike Mr. Steevens, I could not understand it. "What!" I said, "you would Haussmannise New York!
"The greatest of English poets has said that a rose by any ..." This also stopped abruptly. The next annotation at the side was almost undecipherable, but seemed to be something like "How about old Steevens and the mot juste? E.g...." "Morning winked a little wearily at me over the curt edge of Campden Hill and its houses with their sharp shadows.
Malone, Dyce, Steevens, Collier, Halliwell-Phillipps, Knight, Sir Sidney Lee, Messrs. Gosse and Garnett, and Mr. J. C. Collins say that he is Will Shakspere. But Mr. Fleay and Mr. For Chettle says that in the Groatsworth of Wit "a letter, written to divers play-makers, is offensively by one or two of them taken." The mysterious one is, therefore, one of the playwrights addressed by Greene.
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, in two supplementary volumes, Steevens published seven pieces ascribed to Shakspeare. It is to be remarked, that they all appeared in print in Shakspeare's life-time, with his name prefixed at full length. They are the following:
George Steevens, the great editor of Shakespeare, who justly denounced the indignity INTENDED, not offered, to the great Puritan poet's remains by Royalist landsharks, satisfied himself that the corpse was that of a woman of fewer years than Milton.
"All right," he answered, "let's have a drink, then." Some champagne was given him, and he seemed better. When warned against talking, he said, "Well, you are in command. I'll do what you like. We are going to pull through." Maud then went to sleep at last, and between four and five Steevens passed quietly from sleep into death. Everything that could possibly be done for him had been done.
Steevens is a keener observer than I; when he wrote this, he had been two months in America to my one; and he had travelled far and wide over the continent. I am not rash enough, then, to contradict him; but I must own that I have not met this "American," or anything like him, in the streets, clubs, theatres, restaurants, or public conveyances of New York.
Word Of The Day