such a Share of Harmony in his Frame and Temperature, that we have
no Reason to doubt, from a Number of fine Passages, Allusions,
Similies, &_c._ fetch’d from _Musick_, but that He was a passionate
Lover of it. And to this, perhaps, we may owe that great Number of
_Sonnets_, which are sprinkled thro’ his _Plays_. I have found,
that the Stanza’s sung by the Gravedigger in _Hamlet_, are not of
_Shakespeare_’s own Composition, but owe their Original to the old
Earl of _Surrey_’s Poems. Many other of his Occasional little Songs,
I doubt not, but he purposely copied from his Contemporary Writers;
sometimes, out of Banter; sometimes, to do them Honour. The Manner
of their Introduction, and the Uses to which he has assigned them,
will easily determine for which of the Reasons they are respectively
employ’d. In _As you like it_, there are several little Copies of
Verses on _Rosalind_, which are said to be the right _Butter-woman’s
Rank to Market_, and the very _false Gallop of Verses_. Dr. _Thomas
Lodge_, a Physician who flourish’d early in Queen _Elizabeth_’s
Reign, and was a great Writer of the Pastoral Songs and Madrigals,
which were so much the Strain of those Times, composed a whole
Volume of Poems in Praise of his Mistress, whom he calls
_Rosalinde_. I never yet could meet with this Collection; but
whenever I do, I am persuaded, I shall find many of our Author’s
Canzonets on this Subject to be Scraps of the Doctor’s amorous Muse:
as, perhaps, those by _Biron_ too, and the other Lovers in _Love’s
Labour’s lost_, may prove to be.

It has been remark’d in the Course of my Notes, that Musick in our
Author’s time had a very different Use from what it has now. At this
Time, it is only employ’d to raise and inflame the Passions; it,
then, was apply’d to calm and allay all kinds of Perturbations. And,
agreeable to this Observation, throughout all _Shakespeare_’s Plays,