tion of the literary world. I shall be truly anxious to see your edition of Shakspeare. When it comes, I will set to read his works with attention, which may suggest something for a future edition.”
He desires to thank Boswell for an obliging letter. He had promised a few anecdotes of Johnson’s earlier life, but now thinks them too trivial, or anticipated by Mrs. Piozzi. One however he tells, which Boswell has not failed to chronicle: “I have heard him observe that, at Lichfield, he learnt nothing from the master, but a great deal in his school; and at Stourbridge, that he learnt a great deal from the master, and nothing in his school.”
The muse of his friend Jephson had again become pregnant—and again was the critic seduced into consultation on the best mode of ushering the “interesting stranger” into light. In short, he had written a new tragedy. The birth of a play or poem, like that of heir to an estate, usually brings the family together in council in order to relieve the affectionate anxieties of paternity.
While in progress, it had been submitted to Malone who suggested various alterations. Jephson replied in a well-filled sheet of foolscap, so early as January, 1785. He adopts most of the suggestions, allows lines to be dropped, words to be altered; dwells on the stage business, incidents, order of the scenes, more or less prominence of characters—always keeping Mrs. Siddons pre-eminent—weighing the proper allowance of stabbings and poisonings so that too many dead shall not encumber the stage at the same moment! In short, we are let into all the agonies of
