Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/304

284 guine hopes, and of which Shakspeare’s Life is to form an important part; but the stubborn volumes required even more than the stubborn labour he gave them to start into active existence.

“I have still been in hopes of bringing my work to a conclusion, but have been delayed by a thousand unforeseen consequences. If I can but live to finish it, I shall think nothing of the labour. I hope to put it to press about the middle of summer.”

Just eleven years before (1794), he told the same friend he had been almost equally sanguine on the Life of Shakspeare, and a hint is dropped as if some essential discovery in his history had been made. “One half of it was written and fairly transcribed; but when I had brought him to the door of the London theatre, a fancy struck me to give a history of the prevailing manners of the English world when he first came on the town. My plan will have the advantage of novelty, for I think I shall be able to overturn every received tradition respecting this very extraordinary man.”

Another friend, Bishop Percy, reduced to blindness and the necessity of employing a friendly pen, is not less active and inquisitive than before. Two long letters in the spring, treat of Dean Vincent and the Periplus of the Erythrean; Bruce, the traveller; a Hermit’s Meditations, copied by him when a boy though the author continued unknown; Norton Fulgate, written probably in ridicule of Bentley; Malone’s obvious advantage over Steevens as to Shakspeare’s conversation; the Society of An-