404 MACKLIN. of the town. Of the other part of this plan, which he called “The British Inquisition,” it is impossible to think, with out ascribing to the author a degree of vanity almost bor dering on madness. By this plan, he not only incited a discussion on almost the whole circle of arts and sciences, which he was in a great measure to direct, but took upon himself solely to give lectures on the comedy of the ancients—the use of their masks, flutes, mimes, panto mimes, &c. He next engaged to draw a comparison between the stages of Greece and Rome. To conclude with lectures upon each of Shakspeare's plays, commenting on the different stories from which his plots were taken, the uses which he made of them, with strictures on his fables, morals, passions, manners, &c. In respect to his knowledge of ancient comedy, and his attempt to draw a comparison between the Greek and Roman stage, he must have obtained it (if he made any literary inquiry at all) from Dryden's Prefaces, and other detached English writers on the subject, as he was totally unacquainted with either the Greek or Latin languages, and did not under stand French well enough to avail himself of their criticisms. As to the original of Shakspeare's stories, and the uses he made of them, &c. he was still in a worse pre dicament, as this required a course of reading in the contemporary writers of Shakspeare's age, too multifarious either for the grasp of his mind, or for the time which, from other avocations, he could bestow on it—so that to every body but himself, Macklin stood in a very ridicu lous point of view—under the responsibility of large pro mises, with very little capital to discharge them. Of his illustrations of Shakspeare's plays we believe there are no records, as he was not quite fool enough to print them, nor has even ridicule consigned them to memory: but, as a proof of what he was capable of doing as a critic in this line, we subjoin the following proposal he made to Gar rick, as a kind of grateful compensation to him, for giving him the use of his theatre for one night, and for writing a farewell epilogue for him on the same occasion. In his conversation with the manager about the great
