OF PAJNEFULL ADUENTURES. 231
The prose romance, which occupies the succeeding pages, was first published [it is supposed] in 1576, [although no copy of so early a date is at present known,] and how soon afterwards it was adapted to the stage in London cannot be decided. It professed originally to be " gathered into English " by Lawrence Twine, and it is singular that Malone, Steevens, and even Douce, fell into the error of attributing the translation to Thomas Twine, " the con-tinuator of Phaer's Virgil." Lawrence Twine was brother to Thomas Twine, and both were sons of John Twine, Lawrence being the eldest, and as Anthony Wood says, " a fellow of All Souls College, Bachelor of Civil Law, and an ingenious poet of his time" (Ath. Oxon. vol. i. 464, Edit. Bliss). He left nothing behind him in verse, as far as we now know, but certain commendatory lines to books by his friends, and the songs and riddles of Tharsia hereafter -inserted. How frequently, and at what intervals, Lawrence Twine's " Patterne of Painefull Adventures, containing the most excellent, pleasant, and variable Historic, &c. of Prince Apollonius of Tyre/' was reprinted after 1576, we have no exact information; but a new edition of it came out in 1607, the very year before the play of " Pericles," as adapted to the stage by Shakespeare, would seem to have been acted. Our re-publication of the romance is from an edition hitherto unknown, without date, but, as we may judge from the type and other circumstances, published before the opening of the seventeenth century.
The grounds for our opinion, that Shakespeare's " Pericles " (as far as he may lay claim to its authorship) was first acted early in the year 1608, are stated in-, detail in " Farther Particulars regarding Shakespeare and his Works," 8°, 1839. As only fifty copies of that tract were printed, it may be necessary to add here, that a narrative entitled " The Fainfull Adven-