a shakespearian research.
"a tavern is the rendezvous, the exge, the staple of good fellows. i have heard my great-grandfather tell, how his great-great-grandfather should say, that it was an old proverb when his great-grandfather was a child, that `it was a good wind that blew a man to the wine."
mother bombie.
it is a pious in some catholic tries to honor the memory of saints by votive lights burnt before their pictures.
the popularity of a saint, therefore, may be known by the number of these s. one, perhaps, is left to moulder in the darkness of his little chapel; another may have a solitary lamp to throw its blinking rays athwart his ef?gy; while the whole blaze of adoration is lavished at the shrine of some beati?ed father of renown. the wealthy devotee brings his huge luminary of wax, the eager zealot, his seven-branched dlestick; and even the mendit pilgrim is by no means satis?ed that suf?t light is thrown upon the deceased unless he hangs up his little lamp of smoking oil. the sequence is, that in the eagero enlighten, they are often apt to obscure; and i have occasionally seen an unlucky saint almost smoked out of tenance by the of?ciousness of his followers.
in like manner has it fared with the immortal shakespeare. every writer siders it his bounden duty to light up some portion of his character or works, and to rescue some merit from oblivion.
the entator, opulent in words, produces vast tomes of dissertations; the on herd of editors send up mists of obscurity from their the bottom of each page; and every casual scribbler brings his farthing rushlight of eulogy or research to swell the cloud of inse and of smoke.
as i honor all established usages of my brethren of the quill, i thought it but proper to tribute my mite of homage to the memory of the illustrious bard. i was for some time, however, sorely puzzled in what way i should discharge this duty. i found myself anticipated in every attempt at a new reading; every doubtful line had been explained a dozen different ways, and perplexed beyond the reach of elucidation; and as to ?ne passages, they had all been amply praised by previous admirers; nay, so pletely had the bard, of late, been overlarded with panegyric by a great german critic that it was dif?cult now to ?nd even a fault that had not been argued into a beauty.
in this perplexity i was one m turning over his pages when i casually opened upon the ic ses of henry iv., and was, i
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