Not to begin with Nyren's own book would have been an injustice, if not an impossibility. To say that another edition of it was needed is perhaps too much, especially with Mr. Ashley-Cooper's most admirable reprint (in 1902) before me; but with such an accretion of supplementary and corroborative evidence and information as I have been able to bring together, I hope that its reappearance here is justified. For the pocket Mr. Ashley-Cooper's Nyren remains perfection. Since I have gone somewhat minutely into the story of John Nyren and his book in the little paper printed on p. 97 (which first appeared in C. B. Fry's Magazine), I say no more on that subject here.
Of Charles Cowden Clarke, who held the pen during the composition of this classic, a word should, however, be said. He was born in 1787, and lived almost as long as William Beldham, dying in 1877. He was at his father's school at Enfield, where Keats also was a scholar. It was through Leigh Hunt that he came to know the Novellos, and the Lambs, and John Nyren; and in 1828 he married Mary Victoria Novello, who survived him until 1898. Together they compiled the Shakespeare Concordance by which their name lives. Clarke himself became known all throughout England by his Shakespeare lectures and readings. He made friends all his life, and when he died these lines, from his own pen, were placed on his tomb, at Genoa, by his own wish:—
