has not been quite as active as you have been, for I do not find that he sends some of the principal on my list. The best quarto of Dante is surely to be had in London.
“Have you endeavoured to make Elmsley send me a complete third volume of Petrarch, instead of the imperfect one I had from him? You see how I tease you, but you may thank your own goodness for my unreasonable importunity. . . . . I have the nineteen volumes in large paper of Provost’s Hist. de Voyages; but imagined that a supplement had been published. . . . . My old and dear friend Burke, after having made us happy by his unexpected arrival, has now made us as miserable by too speedy departure.”
A succeeding letter from his lordship is filled with Shakspearian details. Among the doubtful plays he would have Pericles stand first, as showing undoubted evidence of the hand of Shakspeare; and Titus Andronicus last, as having little of the master. A hint had been previously dropped to his noble friend, of doubts as to Shakspeare’s share in the three parts of Henry VI., and his design of writing a dissertation on the authorship. The reply then was that the creed of his lordship on the subject was not finally settled. He now says: “The more I consider it, the more confident I am in opinion that they were not originally written by Shakspeare. The second part has most of him, though even here much of the tragick wants that peculiar colour which even in his worst writing is always discernible. Jack Cade is certainly his. Much of the third part is strongly
