powers.

"Here," said Mowbray, presenting me to Macklin, "is a young gentleman, who
is ambitious of being acquainted with the most celebrated Jew that ever
appeared in England. Allow me to introduce him to the real, original Jew of
Venice:

'This is the Jew
That Shakspeare drew!'

Whose lines are those, Harrington? do you know?"

"_Yours_, I suppose."

"Mine! you do me much honour: no, they are Mr. Pope's. Then you don't know
the anecdote?

"Mr. Pope, in the decline of life, was persuaded by Bolingbroke to go once
more to the play-house, to see Mr. Macklin in the character of Shylock.
According to the custom of the time, Pope was seated among the critics in
the pit. He was so much struck and transported with admiration, that in the
middle of the play, he started up, and repeated that distich.

"Now, was not I right when I told you, Harrington, that I would introduce
you to the most celebrated Jew in all England, in all Christendom, in the
whole civilized world?"

No one better than Mowbray knew the tone of enthusiastic theatric
admiration in which the heroes of the stage like, or are supposed to like,
to be addressed. Macklin, who was not asy to please, was pleased. The