as Sir Philip Sydney,
Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose-works, Fuller--of whom we _have_
reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are
talked of here and there, we know, have not endenizened themselves
(nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock
books--it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do
not care for a First Folio of Shakspeare. I rather prefer the common
editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with _plates_, which,
being so execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembrancers, to the
text; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are
so much better than the Shakspeare gallery _engravings_, which _did_.
I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and
I like those editions of him best, which have been oftenest tumbled
about and handled.--On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and
Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I
have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the current
editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the
older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of
the Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing the bones
of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of
the newest fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer could
dream of Burton ever becoming popular?--The wretched Malone could not
do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him
white-wash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there,
in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek,
the eye, the eye-brow, hair, the very dress he used to wear--the only
authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts
and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint.
By ----, if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would
have clapt both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair
of meddling sacrilegious varlets.

I think I see them at their work--these sapient trouble-tombs.

Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the names of some
of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear--to
mine, at least--than that of Milton or of Shakspeare? It may be, that
the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The
sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit