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202. Pope’s list. At the end of vol. vi. of his edition.

Ravenscroft, Edward, in his Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia, 1687, “To the Reader”; see Ingleby’s Centurie of Prayse, p. 404.

203. The Epistles, says one, of Paris and Helen. Sewell, Preface to Pope’s Shakespeare, vol. vii., 1725, p. 10.

It may be concluded, says another. Whalley, Enquiry, p. 79.

Jaggard. “It may seem little matter of wonder that the name of Shakespeare should be borrowed for the benefit of the bookseller; and by the way, as probably for a play as a poem : but modern criticks may be surprised perhaps at the complaint of John Hall, that ‘certayne chapters of the Proverbes, translated by him into English metre, 1550, had before been untruely entituled to be the doyngs of Mayster Thomas Sternhold’ ” (Farmer).

204. Biographica Britannica, 1763, vol. vi. Farmer has a note at this passage correcting a remark in the life of Spenser and showing by a quotation from Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals, that the Faerie Queene was left unfinished,–not that part of it had been lost.

205. Anthony Wood. ” Fasti, 2d. Edit., v. 1. 208.–It will be seen on turning to the former edition, that the latter part of the paragraph belongs to another Stafford. I have since observed that Wood is not the first who hath given us the true author of the pamphlet” (Fanner). Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 378. But Stafford’s authorship of this pamphlet has now been disproved: see the English Historical Review, vi. 284-305.

Warton, Thomas. Life of Ralph Bathurst, 2 vols., 1761.

Aubrey. See Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, 1898, vol. ii., pp. 225-227. For Beeston, see vol. i., pp. 96-7.

Crendon. “It was observed in the former edition that this place is not met with in Spelman’s Villare, or in Adams’s Index ; nor, it might have been added, in the first and the last performance of this sort, Speed’s Tables and Whatley’s Gazetteer : perhaps, however, it may be meant under the name of Crandon ; but the inquiry is of no importance. It should, I think, be written Credendon ; tho’ better antiquaries than Aubrey have acquiesced in the vulgar corruption” (Farmer). But Crendon is only a misprint for Grendon.

206. Rowe tells us. See p. 4.

Hamlet revenge. Steevens and Malone “confirm” Farmer’s observation by references to Dekker’s Satiromastix, 1602, and an anonymous play called A Warning for Faire Women, 1599. Farmer is again out in his chronology.

Holt. See above, p. 190. Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare, vol. viii., Appendix, note on viii. 194.

Kirkman, Francis, bookseller, published his Exact Catalogue of all the English Stage Plays in 1671.

Winstanley, William (1628-1698), compiler of Lives of the most famous English Poets, 1687. “These people, who were the Curls of the last age, ascribe likewise to our author those miserable performances Mucidorous and the Merry Devil of Edmonton ” (Farmer).

seven years afterward. “Mr. Pope asserts ‘The troublesome Raigne of King John,’ in two parts, 1611, to have been written by Shakespeare and Rowley: which edition is a mere copy of another in black letter, 1591. But I find his assertion is somewhat to be doubted: for the old edition hath no name of author at all; and that of 1611, the initials only, W. Sh., in the title-page” (Farmer).