OF PA1NEFULL ADVENTURES. 241
" Instead of these two passages we read as follows in the prose narrative :—
' If as you say, my lord, you are the governor, let not your authority, which should teach you to rule others, be the means to make you misgovern yourself. If the eminence of your place came unto you by descent, and the royalty of your blood, let not your life prove your birth a bastard : if it were thrown upon you by opinion, make good that opinion was the cause to make you great. What reason is there in your justice, who hath power over all, to undo any ? If you take from me mine honour, you are like him that makes a gap into forbidden ground, after whom too many enter, and you are guilty of all their evils. My life is yet unspotted, my chastity unstained in, thought: then, if your violence deface this building, the workmanship of heaven, made up for good, and not to be the exercise of sin's intemperance, you do kill your own honour, abuse your own justice, and impoverish me.'
" If these thoughts and this language be not the thoughts and the language of Shakespeare, I am much mistaken, and have read him to little purpose. I might add much more, and furnish many other quotations to the same effect, but I hope sdbn to receive a few copies of the whole of the tract from Germany, in a reprinted shape, and then such as think with me, as regards the preceding extracts, will be able to -gratify themselves to the full. I have here necessarily adverted to some points that I have touched elsewhere; but I dare say that few of the readers of the Athenczum have seen my remarks."
.....In the tract we have distinct evidence that
Wilkins attended the public performance of Shake-, speare's " Pericles " for the purpose of taking notes of the drama as it was delivered from the mouths of the Actors; and being himself a poet of reputation and genius, he afterwards put his memoranda into a narrative which was published by one of the most celebrated booksellers of the day. It is my firm conviction that it supplies many passages, written by
VOL. iv. (x) . Q -