There have been some ages in which providence seemed pleased in a most remarkable manner to display it self, in giving to the world the finest genius’s to illuminate a people formerly barbarous.  After a long night of Gothic ignorance, after many ages of priestcraft and superstition, learning and genius visited our Island in the days of the renowned Queen Elizabeth.  It was then that liberty began to dawn, and the people having shook off the restraints of priestly austerity, presumed to think for themselves.  At an AEra so remarkable as this, so famous in history, it seems no wonder that the nation would be blessed with those immortal ornaments of wit and learning, who all conspired at once to make it famous.——­This astonishing genius, seemed to be commissioned from above, to deliver us not only from the ignorance under which we laboured as to poetry, but to carry poetry almost to its perfection.  But to write a panegyric on Shakespear appears as unnecessary, as the attempt would be vain; for whoever has any taste for what is great, terrible, or tender, may meet with the amplest gratification in Shakespear; as may those also have a taste for drollery and true humour.  His genius was almost boundless, and he succeeded alike in every part of writing.  I cannot forbear giving the character of Shakespear in the words of a great genius, in a prologue spoken by Mr. Garrick when he first opened Drury-lane house as Manager.

  When learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes,
  First rear’d the stage;——­immortal Shakespear rose,
  Each change of many-coloured life he drew,
  Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new,
  Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
  And panting time toiled after him, in vain.

All men have discovered a curiosity to know the little stories and particularities of a great genius; for it often happens, that when we attend a man to his closet, and watch his moments of solitude, we shall find such expressions drop from him, or we may observe such instances of peculiar conduct, as will let us more into his real character, than ever we can discover while we converse with him in public, and when perhaps he appears under a kind of mask.  There are but few things known of this great man; few incidents of his life have descended to posterity, and tho’ no doubt the fame of his abilities made a great noise in the age in which he flourished; yet his station was not such as to produce many incidents, as it was subject to but few vicissitudes.  Mr. Rowe, who well understood, and greatly admired Shakespear, has been at pains to collect what incidents were known, or were to be found concerning him, and it is chiefly upon Mr. Rowe’s authority we build the account now given.