Longinus, On the Sublime, vi.
[90]. Noble Writer,—the Earl of Shaftesbury, in his Characteristicks: “The British Muses, in this Dinn of Arms, may well lie abject and obscure; especially being as yet in their mere Infant-State. They have hitherto scarce arriv'd to any thing of Shapeliness or Person. They lisp as in their Cradles: and their stammering Tongues, which nothing but their Youth and Rawness can excuse, have hitherto spoken in wretched Pun and Quibble” (1711, i., p. 217).
Complaints of its Barbarity, as in Dryden's Discourse concerning Satire, ad fin (ed. W. P. Ker, ii., pp. 110, 113).
Sir Thomas Hanmer.
[92]. The “other Gentlemen” who communicated their observations to Hanmer include Warburton (see Introduction), the “Rev. Mr. Smith of Harlestone in Norfolk” (see Zachary Grey, Notes on Shakespeare, Preface), and probably Thomas Cooke, the editor of Plautus (see Correspondence of Hanmer, ed. Bunbury, p. 229).
[93]. much obliged to them. Amid the quarrels of Pope, Theobald, and Warburton, it is pleasant to find an editor admitting some merit in his predecessors.
what Shakespeare ought to have written. Cf. the following passage in the Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet attributed to Hanmer: “The former [Theobald] endeavours to give us an author as he is: the latter [Pope], by the correctness and excellency of his own genius, is often tempted to give us an author as he thinks he ought to be.” Theobald, it is said, is “generally thought to have understood our author best” (p. 4).
Henry V., iii. 4.
[94]. Merchant of Venice, iii. 5. 48.