A further justification for the compilation of the work on an exhaustive scale, lies in the fact that it has not been done already. Charles Knight seems to be the only writer who has hitherto attempted any sketch of a general history of opinion respecting Shakespeare. His essay formed part of his _Studies of Shakespeare_, which were first published in 1849, and it was reissued separately as the first volume of a new edition of his Cabinet Edition of _Shakespeare_ which was published in London by William S. Orr & Co., of Paternoster Row, in 1851.[vii:1] Knight surveys his subject somewhat perfunctorily from Edmund Spenser to Coleridge. He devotes much space to the eighteenth century, but he pays scant attention to the nineteenth, and he is far from exhaustive in his treatment of earlier periods. Commendable as is his pioneer effort, it is now, alike in form and matter, largely out of date. A more imposing endeavour was made later to deal with the earlier section of the topic. Dr. Ingleby, a Shakespearean scholar of repute, issued in 1874 the work entitled _Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse_, in which he dealt with the period extending from the year 1591, when Shakespeare first came into notice as a dramatist, until 1693. A second edition of Dr. Ingleby’s volume, revised and enlarged by Miss Toulmin Smith, appeared five years later under the auspices of the New Shakspere Society. A very substantial supplement to this volume, called _Some 300 Fresh Allusions to Shakspere from 1594 to 1694_, was edited by Dr. Furnivall for the New Shakspere Society in 1886. Thus the _Centurie of Prayse_ in its final shape extends to 912 pages in quarto. The large book is not at everybody’s disposal, but its contents, as far as they go, are very valuable, and no Shakespeare library is complete without it. None the less, it covers less than a third part of that field which a full history of opinion about Shakespeare ought to occupy; it leaves ample room for a treatise on the whole subject.