SHAKSPERE AND MALONE
Rival editors have recourse to necromancy to know from Shakspere himself who of them is the fittest to edit and illustrate him. Describe the meeting, the ceremonies of conjuration, the appearance of the spirit, the effect on the rival invokers. When they have resumed courage, the arbiter appointed by them asks the question. They listen, Malone leaps up while the rest lay their heads at the same instant that the arbiter re-echoes the words of the spirit, "Let Malone!" The spirit shudders, then exclaims in the dread and angry utterance of the dead, "No! no! Let me alone, I said, inexorable boobies!"
O that eternal bricker-up of Shakspere! Registers, memorandum-books—and that Bill, Jack and Harry, Tom, Walter and Gregory, Charles, Dick and Jim, lived at that house, but that nothing more is known of them. But, oh! the importance when half-a-dozen players'-bills can be made to stretch through half-a-hundred or more of pages, though there is not one word in them that by any force can be made either to illustrate the times or life or writings of Shakspere, or, indeed, of any time. And, yet, no edition but this gentleman's name burs upon it—burglossa with a vengeance. Like the genitive plural of a Greek adjective, it is Malone, Malone, Malone, Μαλων, Μαλων, Μαλων.
[Edmund Malone's Variorum edition of Shakspere was published in 1790.]
OF THE FROWARDNESS OF WOMAN December 11, 1804
It is a remark that I have made many times, and many times, I guess, shall repeat, that women are infinitely fonder of clinging to and beating about, hanging upon and keeping up, and reluctantly letting fall any doleful or painful or unpleasant subject, than men of the same class and rank.
NE QUID NIMIS