that does him honour.” In a few months he again says to the Bishop, “I have been much gratified with Malone’s curious Life of Dryden. It is a most remarkable instance of diligence and accuracy. The numerous anecdotes, and the accounts of noted persons and families interspersed, are highly interesting.”
When the scene changed, and Malone sought Dublin, Caldwell faithfully attended his book-shop explorations.
In 1801, he tells Bishop Percy of one of these—“Mr. Malone was in town for two days on his way to London. I accompanied him one entire morning in researches in which we were not very successful.” In June, another well-known topic is mentioned in their correspondence—“I have had a long agreeable letter from Mr. Malone. He mentions a curious sale of the farrago of the famous Samuel Ireland, the Shakspeare Papers, in three immense volumes bound in Russia, green boxes without end, old leases, deeds, seals, and playhouse accounts, to take in the hunters of curiosities.”
On another occasion, they had an elaborate though vain examination together of the royal library for a scarce author. But a previous mischance in such researches acting upon impaired habit of body from over-study, created among the friends of our subject, for a time, serious fears of the consequences. Archdeacon Nares writes to Bishop Percy—“Malone has been nearly destroyed by an accident apparently insignificant, that of breaking his shin in getting out of a coach at the Museum. It has been very un-
