as to take the trouble to disclaim connection with it in the journals.
At length in 1795, another plan of publication found favour, which may be considered in effect after long delay, great labour, and some changes of design, the one ultimately adopted, though he did not live to bring forth what was nevertheless all his own. His views, such as they then were, will be found in the prospectus.[1]
- ↑ “Reverting, however, to his original idea (from which he was very reluctantly induced to depart), that of giving a new and splendid edition of the plays and poems of the author without engravings, he intended to present the public with a second edition of his former work, in twenty volumes, royal octavo, on a larger paper and type, both for the text and commentaries, than have ever been employed in any edition of Shakspeare with notes. The first six volumes will be ready for publication in 1796; and the remainder of the work, in two deliveries of seven volumes each, will be published with all convenient speed.
“The first volume will be appropriated to an entirely new Life of Shakspeare (compiled from original and authentic documents), which is now nearly ready for the press; the second and third to Mr. Malone’s History of the Stage, considerably enlarged, and his other dissertations illustrative of the poet’s works; together with the prefaces of former editors, to which some new elucidations will be added. The twentieth volume will comprise Shakspeare’s poems, and the remaining sixteen his plays which will be arranged in the order in which they are supposed by Mr. Malone to have been written; with the editor’s commentaries as well as those of his predecessors, and several new annotations.
“To the plays it is not proposed to annex any engravings; but the Life of Shakspeare will be ornamented with a delineation of his bust at Stratford, of the head of which Mr. Malone is possessed of a fac-simile, the engraved portraits of Sir Thomas Lucy and Mr. John Coombe, from drawings made on purpose for his work, in 1793, by Mr. Sylvester Harding; also, with an engraving of Shakspeare, not from factitious or fictitious representation of that poet, but from a drawing of the same size as the original, made in 1786 by Mr. Humphry, from the only authentic portrait now known, that which was formerly in the possession of Sir William D'Avenant, and now belonging to the heir of the late Duke of Chandos.”
