of national interest as the most eminent scholars maintain, we owe him serious obligations. He brought many useful qualities to the investigation—laborious habits, keen spirit of research, love of antiquity, and determination to explore farther and dive deeper than any of his predecessors. He saw as he advanced many new points of inquiry opening before him. A placid persevering spirit carried him cheerfully onward to exhume from oblivion such information, in print or manuscript, as inquiry proved to exist. From the solid volume to the tract of a few leaves, nothing was unexamined that could be procured. He purchased, read, studied, and turned to its proper uses everything bearing upon his subject in the opinions, language, and manners of the olden time. The very quiet of the pursuit kept a mind occupied and at ease which painful private circumstances might have caused to prey upon itself. A competent provision left nothing to apprehend on the score of poverty; and learning, family, and connections gave him at once that standing among the educated and well-born which it might have cost others less fortunately situated some trouble to acquire.
Emendations of Shakspeare’s text, though the principal, was not solely his object. The drama as but a representation of life, required life in all its phases to be gauged with all the accuracy which an attentive survey of its peculiarities, habits and general social condition could give. Hence much ampler reading than merely dramatic reading, was required. Poems and plays could supply only a part of the knowledge necessary to full acquaintance with the age. An
