_Pericles_ is one of the Plays omitted in the later Editions, as well as the early Folios, and not improperly; tho’ it was published many years before the death of Shakespeare, with his name in the Title-page. Aulus Gellius informs us that some Plays are ascribed absolutely to Plautus, which he only _re-touched_ and _polished_; and this is undoubtedly the case with our Author likewise. The revival of this performance, which Ben Jonson calls _stale_ and _mouldy_, was probably his earliest attempt in the Drama. I know that another of these discarded pieces, the _Yorkshire Tragedy_, had been frequently called so; but most certainly it was not written by our Poet at all: nor indeed was it printed in his life-time. The Fact on which it is built was perpetrated no sooner than 1604: much too late for so mean a performance from the hand of Shakespeare. Sometimes a very little matter detects a forgery. You may remember a Play called the _Double Falshood_, which Mr. Theobald was desirous of palming upon the world for a posthumous one of Shakespeare: and I see it is classed as such in the last Edition of the Bodleian Catalogue. Mr. Pope himself, after all the strictures of Scriblerus, in a Letter to Aaron Hill, supposes it of that age; but a mistaken accent determines it to have been written since the middle of the last century: ——This late example Of base Henriquez, bleeding in me now, From each good _Aspect_ takes away my trust. And in another place, You have an _Aspect_, Sir, of wondrous wisdom. The word _Aspect_, you perceive, is here accented on the _first_ Syllable, which, I am confident, in _any_ sense of it, was never the case in the time of Shakespeare; though it may sometimes appear to be so, when we do not observe a preceding _Elision_. Some of the professed Imitators of our old Poets have not attended to this and many other _Minutiæ_: I could point out to you several performances in the respective Styles of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, which the _imitated_ Bard could not possibly have either read or construed. This very accent hath troubled the Annotators on Milton. Dr. Bentley observes it to be “a _tone_ different from the present use.” Mr. Manwaring, in his _Treatise of Harmony and Numbers_, very solemnly informs us that “this Verse is defective both in Accent and Quantity, B. 3. V. 266. His words here ended, but his meek _Aspéct_ Silent yet spake.—— Here,” says he, “a syllable is _acuted_ and _long_, whereas it should be _short_ and _graved_”! And a still more extraordinary Gentleman, one Green, who published a Specimen of a _new Version_ of the _Paradise Lost_, into BLANK verse, “by which that amazing Work is brought somewhat nearer the Summit of Perfection,” begins with correcting a blunder in the fourth book, V. 540: ——The setting Sun Slowly descended, and with right _Aspéct_— Levell’d his evening rays.—— _Not so_ in the _New Version_: