such assistance to render it tolerable. One of the Roman emperors is said to have offered a reward to any one who should invent a new pleasure; and if to pleasure he had added the epithet innocent, I should highly approve of his design, certain as I am that such invention would do more real service and much less injury to mankind than all the wise speculations of philosophers from Epicurus to Voltaire.
For my own part, I will never be laughed out of my amusements till they shall have proved hurtful to society, but will boldly proceed in those pursuits which, though they cannot be deemed the fruits of literature, may at least be styled its flowers. Such is my opinion of the more trifling literary amusements. But your undertaking, my dear Ned, needs not any such apology. The history of man is on all hands allowed to be the most important study of the human mind; and what is your chronological account of the writings of Shakspeare other than the history of the progress of the greatest genius that ever honoured and delighted human nature?
And now to proceed in answer to your queries. Allured by the title-page, I long since read Green’s play,[1] with the view you mention, but could not find in it the most distant resemblance to the fairy part of the Midsummer Night’s Dream. The plan of it, in brief, is this: Bohan, a Scot, disgusted with the world, has retired to a tomb where he has fixed his dwelling; and here he is met by Aster Oberon, king of the fairies who entertains him with an antick, or dance by his subjects. These two personages, after some moral conversation, determine to listen to a tragedy which is acted before them, and to which they make a kind of chorus by moralizing at the end of each act—a circumstance which so early in the English drama may perhaps be curious.
The edition which I possess of Sir David Lindsay’s works, though printed so early as 1581, is not the original, but is said in the title-page to be turned and made perfect English from Poems compiled in the Scottish tongue. In this collection