[Footnote 2: AEsch. Eumen. v. 230-239. 'Notandum est, scenam jam Athenas
translatam sic institui, ut primo Orestes solus conspiciatur in templo
Minerva: supplex ejus simulacrum venerans; paulo post autem eum
consequantur Eumenides, &c.' Schiitz's note. The recessions of the
chorus were termed 'peravaoraneu'. There is another instance in the
Ajax, v. 814. Ed.]




ORDER OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS.

Various attempts have been made to arrange the plays of Shakspeare, each
according to its priority in time, by proofs derived from external
documents. How unsuccessful these attempts have been might easily be
shown, not only from the widely different results arrived at by men, all
deeply versed in the black-letter books, old plays, pamphlets,
manuscript records and catalogues of that age, but also from the
fallacious and unsatisfactory nature of the facts and assumptions on
which the evidence rests. In that age, when the press was chiefly
occupied with controversial or practical divinity,--when the law, the
church and the state engrossed all honour and respectability,--when a
degree of disgrace, 'levior quaedam infamiae macula', was attached to the
publication of poetry, and even to have sported with the Muse, as a
private relaxation, was supposed to be--a venial fault, indeed,
yet--something beneath the gravity of a wise man,--when the professed
poets were so poor, that the very expenses of the press demanded the
liberality of some wealthy individual, so that two thirds of Spenser's
poetic works, and those most highly praised by his learned admirers and
friends, remained for many years in manuscript, and in manuscript