Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/285

 were Written.

VERY circumtance that relates to thoe perons whoe writings we admire, interets our curioity. The time and place of their birth, their education and gradual attainments, the dates of their productions and the reception they everally met with, their habits of life, their private friendhips, and even their external form, are all points, which, how little oever they may have been adverted to by their contemporaries, trongly engage the attention of poterity. Not atisfied with receiving the aggregated widom of ages as a free gift, we viit the manions where our intructors are aid to have reided, we contemplate with pleaure the trees under whoe hade they once repoed, and wih to ee and to convere with thoe ages, whoe labours have added trength to virtue, and efficacy to truth.

Shakpeare above all writers, ince the days of Homer has excited this curioity in the highet degree; as perhaps no poet of any nation was ever more idolized by his countrymen. An ardent deire to undertand and explain his works, has, to the honour of the preent age, o much encreaed within thee lat thirty years, that more has been done