Read it through once

The anonymous essay has been of continued interest to students of Shakespeare. Echoes of its ideas if not its words appear in such later critics of the eighteenth century as Gentleman, Steevens, Richardson, and Morgann; in 1790 Malone copied out some two pages of the best of it for publication; and in 1864 the whole was reprinted, a not too usual thing for an obscure eighteenth century pamphlet. Present-day students of Shakespeare, among them D.N. Smith, Lounsbury, Babcock, Lawrence, and Stoll have treated the essay with unvarying respect. Remarking that it anticipates some of Johnson's arguments, Smith calls it in general a "well-written, interesting book" greatly superior to the anonymous essay on Hamlet of 1752 (_Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare_, xxn). Lawrence has recently praised a selected passage for its "wise words ... which may be pondered with profit" (Hamlet and Fortinbras, _PMLA_61 [1946], 697). And Stoll, who has obviously read the book with care, has found in one of its statements the very "beginning of historical criticism" (PQ 24 [1945], 291; _Shakespeare Studies_, 212n.), and has elsewhere seen much to commend in it.