Footnote 3:[(return)]
[For some account of this work, by Arthur Bury, and the controversy respecting it, see Wood's Athenæ, edit. Bliss, vol. i. p. 483. William Rooke, the Writer of the letter, was of Queen's College; made B.A., May 16, 1674; M.A., Oct. 30, 1677; B.D., April 12, 1690.—Ed.]
A SHAKSPERIAN BOOK.
"There exists," says Mr. John Wilson, "as it were a talismanic influence in regard to the most trivial circumstances connected with Shakspeare," and yet this enthusiast has not, in his Shaksperiana, alluded to the dramatic works of Mary Hornby, written under, and dated from, the dear old roof at Stratford-upon-Avon!
It was my late good fortune, after filling my pockets from the twopenny boxes of the suburban bookstalls, to find, on turning out the heterogeneous contents, that I had accidentally become possessed of The Broken Vow, a comedy by the aforesaid lady, who waits to be enrolled in that much wanted book, a new edition of the Biographia Dramatica. This Broken Bow which looks like a re-cooking of the Merry Miller of Thomas Sadler, 1766, bears to be "printed at Stratford-upon-Avon, for the Author, by W. Barnacle, 1820." Mary Hornby, following the example of the preoccupier of the butcher's shop, tries her hand at both tragedy and comedy; in the first line she stands charged with the perpetration of The Battle of Waterloo, which, I doubt not, rivalled its original enactment in its sanguinary character. I have not been lucky enough to fall in with this, which was a hit; our fair authoress, in her preface to the comedy under notice, modestly attributing its great success more to the kindness of her friends than to its literary merit.
Mrs. Hornby sustains the dignity of the drama by adhering to her five acts, with prologue and epilogue according to prescription. Looking to the prologue for the who, the why, and the wherefore, I am sorry to say I find no materials for the concoction of a biographical note; upon the second point, the why, she tells us:
"When women teem, be it with bad or good,
They must bring forth—forsooth 'tis right they should,
But to produce a bantling of the brain,