William Hamilton wrote _A Soliloquy in Imitation of Hamlet_, a paraphrase of the famous speech, almost as bald as that from which Shakespeare copied his. But the effort is doubtless more of a literary exercise than an attempt at improvement of the original, for Hamilton shows at various points in his works a fairly intimate knowledge and real regard for Shakespeare’s genius. Mallet read his Shakespeare intelligently, as witness his _Edwin and Emma_, a love ballad, with its text taken from _Twelfth Night_. And William Shenstone shows the right spirit in this very passable stanza from _The Schoolmistress_, happily describing a village school: “Yet nurs’d with skill, what dazzling fruits appear! Ev’n now sagacious foresight points to show A little bench of heedless bishops here, And there a chancellor in embryo, Or bard sublime, if bard may e’er be so, As Milton, Shakespeare, names that ne’er shall die! Though now he crawl along the ground so low, Nor weeting how the muse shall soar on high, Wishes, poor starveling elf! his paper kite to fly.” That is well meaning and temperate enough, but some of these writers erred on the side of enthusiasm. The following passage from Robert Lloyd’s _Shakespeare, an Epistle to Mr. Garrick_, may be quoted as an example: “Oh, where’s the bard, who at one view Could look the whole creation through, Who travers’d all the human heart, Without recourse to Grecian art? He scorn’d the modes of imitation, Of altering, pilfering, and translation; Nor painted horror, grief, or rage, From models of a former age; The bright original he took, And tore the leaf from nature’s book. ’Tis Shakespeare, thus, who stands alone.” It will be noted that this effusion approaches Shakespeare through Garrick; and such is the case with many others that must remain unquoted. The reason is that Garrick occupied, by public consent if not by his own desire, the position of Shakespeare’s patron. He took, for instance, a leading part in organising the Shakespeare jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon. Among his enterprises on this occasion was the issue of a volume of tributes to Shakespeare, containing several poetical pieces by himself, distinguished rather for their enthusiasm than for poetical inspiration. Dr. Johnson opened the book with some light verses, addressed to The Fair in a vein of somewhat elephantine playfulness; and Garrick collected into it a number of extracts from various writers, in verse and prose, in praise of Shakespeare, prefacing the whole with a high-flown effort of his own in heroic couplets, and publishing it in handsome quarto.