Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/290

270 willing to heal, and sometimes has shown a threatening tendency.”

In Ireland he saw little to allure those of studious habits to a long stay. No retreat for a quiet man was there. All were politicians. Some of small talent and without an atom of experience could even believe themselves statesmen; happy only when indulged with a fling at that Union which was to extinguish for ever their small importance. To his friend Mr. Philip Metcalfe hints were dropped toward the end of the year that things were not as he wished, who replies—

“Your picture of that country removes my apprehensions of your leaving us for any length of time; for its reform of manners must be too slow for our time of life to hope to see accomplished.”

In 1802, paragraphs in the newspapers intimated that two letters of Shakspeare, written in 1606 and 1607, had been found in the Dorset papers, addressed to the Lord Treasurer Buckhurst, Earl of Dorset. Mr. (afterwards Sir Nathaniel) Wraxall had been it appeared in possession of these papers; and to him Malone applied, but found the newspaper statement erroneous. He mentioned however that in the Middlesex papers which formed part of the Dorset collection, he found a petition from Sarah Shakspeare to the Lord Treasurer Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, but whether she were a relative of the poet did not appear. The duke, he said, entrusted him with the papers in 1797 for the selection and publication of such as were of public interest. His grace died in 1800, and in December following the