Note 89 — Chapter III · ANCESTRY OF SHAKESPEARE’S ROMAN PLAYS

There are so many good things, despite all the inevitable mistakes, in Dryden’s Life of Plutarch, that one half regrets that Professor Ker’s plan did not allow him to include at least part of it in his admirable selection. Thus, in excuse for omitting the catalogue of Plutarch’s lost works, which had been given in full in the Paris edition: “But it is a small comfort to the merchant to pursue his bill of freight when he is certain his ship is cast away; moved by the like reason, I have omitted that ungrateful task.”