Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/91

Rh a man, whoe zeal for the improvement of Englih literature, and whoe liberality to men of learning, gave him a jut title to all the honours which men of learning can betow. To uppoe that a peron employed in an extenive trade, lived in a tate of indifference to los and gain, would be to conceive a character incredible and romantic; but it may be jutly aid of Mr., that he had enlarged his mind beyond olicitude about petty loes, and refined it from the deire of unreaonable profit. He was willing to admit thoe with whom he contracted, to the jut advantage of their own labours; and had never learned to conider the author as an under-agent to the bookeller. The wealth which he inherited or acquired, he enjoyed like a man concious of the dignity of a profeion ubervient to learning. His dometic life was elegant, and his charity was liberal. His manners were oft, and his converation delicate: nor is, perhaps, any quality in him more to be cenured, than that reerve which confined his acquaintance to a mall number, and made his example les ueful, as it was les extenive. He was the lat commercial name of a family which will be long remembered; and if Horace thought it not improper to convey the to poterity; if rhetoric uffered no dihonour from Quintilian’s dedication to ; let it not be thought that we digrace Shakepeare, by appending to his works the name of.

To this prefatory advertiement I have now ubjoined a chapter extracted from the Guls Hornbook, (a atirical pamphlet written by Decker in the year 1609)