But should any error of my pen awaken Clariss. Bentleium to enlighten the world with his annotations on our author, I shall not think that the least reward or happiness arising to me from these my endeavours. I shall waive at present what hath caused such feuds in the learned world, whether this piece was originally written by Shakspeare, though certainly that, were it true, must add a considerable share to its merit, especially with such who are so generous as to buy and commend what they never read, from an implicit faith in the author only: a faith which our age abounds in as much as it can be called deficient in any other. Let it suffice, that THE TRAGEDY OF TRAGEDIES; or, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF TOM THUMB, was written in the reign of queen Elizabeth. Nor can the objection made by Mr D----, that the tragedy must then have been antecedent to the history, have any weight, when we consider that, though the HISTORY OF TOM THUMB, printed by and for Edward M----r, at the Looking-glass on London-bridge, be of a later date, still must we suppose this history to have been transcribed from some other, unless we suppose the writer thereof to be inspired: a gift very faintly contended for by the writers of our age. As to this history's not bearing the stamp of second, third, or fourth edition, I see but little in that objection; editions being very uncertain lights to judge of books by; and perhaps Mr M----r may have joined twenty editions in one, as Mr C----l hath ere now divided one into twenty. Nor doth the other argument, drawn from the little care our author hath taken to keep up to the letter of this history, carry any greater force. Are there not instances of plays wherein the history is so perverted, that we can know the heroes whom they celebrate by no other marks than their names? nay, do we not find the same character placed by different poets in such different lights, that we can discover not the least sameness, or even likeness, in the features? The Sophonisba of Mairet and of Lee is a tender, passionate, amorous mistress of Massinissa: Corneille and Mr Thomson give her no other passion but the love of her country, and make her as cool in her affection to Massinissa as to Syphax. In the two latter she resembles the character of queen Elizabeth; in the two former she is the picture of Mary queen of Scotland. In short, the one Sophonisba is as different from the other as the Brutus of Voltaire is from the Marius, jun., of Otway, or as the Minerva is from the Venus of the ancients. Let us now proceed to a regular examination of the tragedy before us, in which I shall treat separately of the Fable, the Moral, the Characters, the Sentiments, and the Diction. And first of the