we have been clandestinely hostile, and secretly bitter when alive. But the praises which Jonson showered on the urn of. Shakespeare, were evidently not the effect of constraint but choice; they do not betray the marks of affected regard and concealed dislike; they are not the cant of hypocritical encomium but the genuine unvitiated tribute of the heart. The lines which Jorson inserted under the portrait of Shakespeare, and those which he dedicated to his memory, bear evident marks of his veneration for the poet, and of his personal esteem for the man. Mr. Farmer justly says that Ben's verses on him who wrote for all time are the warmest panegyrick that ever was written; We shall quote the inscription under the picture, and afterwards some of the verses addressed to his memory.

This figure that thou here seest put
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature, to outdo the life.
O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he hath hit
His face, the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass;
But since he cannot, reader look,
Not on his picture, but his book.'

Soul of the age,

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage,
My Shakespeare rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chancer or Spenser; or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb;
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read and praise to give."

Though he notices his defect of classical erudition, yet this is not said to diminish but to exalt his fame; for he places the productions of his genius above all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome sent forth.'

He passes on his genius this deserved sublimity of eulogy, that 'He was not of an age; BUT FOR ALL TIME.'

He addresses him in terms which envy may hyprocritically employ towards the living, but which when hypocrisy is no longer necessary, it seldom uses to the dead

My gentle Shakespeare, "Sweet swan of Avon.'

In short in the praise which Jonson bestows on Shakespeare we see rather the full and unrestrained homage of unfeigned affection

than the niggardly payment of latent envy and concealed detraction. The commendation is not destroyed by any qualifying clausenor any artifice of invidious extenuation. Many years after Shakespeare's death Ben with warmth exclaimed, I loved the man and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed honest and of an open and free nature, had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped; sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Harterius.' We have distinct and incontrovertible proof that Ben Jonson did profess to esteem the worth and to venerate the genius of Shakespeare, and not a particle of proof has been adduced to shew that he professed what he did not feel; and that like some of his commentators, le secretly calumniated whom he affected to praise. Mr. Gilchrist has undertaken a good cause and he has performed it with ability and zeal.

ART. 32.-Hints to the Bearers of Walking Sticks and Umbrellas, Illustrated by Six Engravings. 2s. 6d. Murray, Fleet-street. 1808.

THIS little work is divided into two parts. Chapter first is on the origin, antiquity, and use of walking-sticks and umbrellas. Chapter 2d. on the various modes of miscarrying walking-sticks and umbrellas, to the general annoyance of all passengers in the streets. The author styles these miscarriers of walking-sticks encroachers on the public right of way, and classes them under the following heads. 1. The Fencer; 2. the Twirler; 3. the Arguer; 4. the Trailer; 5. the Parthian; 6. the Unicorn; 7. the Turnstile. The Umbrella-bearers he distinguishes by the characteristic names of Shield-bearers, Sky-strikers, Mud-scoopers and Invertors. By observing the directions here given many a disastrous and ludicrous circumstance may be avoided; for example;

Many fix the head of their cane or umbrella close under the arm, preserving it firm in a horizontal position, or somewhat inclining upwards: hence an inadvertent or dim-sighted follower receives the dirty end in his mouth, or stabs his eye against the pointed ferule, which, like a reverted spear, wounds those who follow, instead of those who meet its bearer. (This annoyer is called the Parthian, who as every body knows, while his horse galloped shot his arrows behind him.) The Unicorn is the converse of the Parthian. His formidable horn projects, and forces a passage through the croud for the resolute charger. The stick grasped by the head, with the end advanced in the manner of a spear or bayonet, characterises the bul lying buck, and many varieties of vulgar swaggerers. There is more. over, a species of Unicorn, destitute of ferocity in appearance, but pot less incommoding to passengers; he may be called the Unicorn au corne baissé, as he drives the point of his cane like a plough before him on the pavement. This is an awkwardness of men who are

subject to abstraction or absence of mind, or who wish to assume an air of reverie. The Turnstile, instead of fixing his cane or umbrella, like the Parthian, so that it may extend its whole length behind, or advancing it wholly before like the Unicorn, places it under his arm in such manner that it may extend equally both behind and before. Now though it does not extend nearly so far in either direction as in each of the former instances, it produces the united inconveniences of both. In fact, a man so circumstanced engrosses the rightful portion of hree men at least on the pavement; and when he turns round his stick describes a circle of space which might be fairly occupied by five. An absent man of the Turnstile species was walking through a street, when two men with coal sacks on their shoulders endeavoured to pass on either side; the elbows of the coal-heavers struck against the extremities of his umbrella: the force of their advance rolled him into the gutter; the shock over. threw the coal sacks from the heads of the bearers; the unfortunate Turnstile wallowed in the mud, was sorely bruised, and nearly bu ried and stifled under six bushels of small coal.. The Shield-bearer drives his umbrella before him, covering completely his head and body. He can see no one in front, and he occupies the whole pavement: he either runs against every one before him, or compels them to step into the gutter,' &c.

The instructions given for carrying walking sticks and umbrellas with elegance and ease are various and judicious. But the author proposes, as the best remedy to avoid the grievances mentioned, to open an academy at the Lyceum in the Strand, for the purpose of drilling ladies and gentlemen in the most approved method of handJing walking-sticks and umbrellas with a view to individual grace and general convenience. We would most earnestly recommend our young gentlemen-loungers and loiterers to take a few lessons, by which means they would be able to present their persons with more elegant effect to the fair sex whom they are ambitious to strike with admiration of themselves, by the variety of easy attitudes with which they carry their canes, their thorns, their bumbuns, supple-jacks, clubs, &c. instead of soiling the elegant folds of the mantle, or disconcerting the graceful ringlets of our lovely country-women who adorn the streets of this metropolis.

List of Articles, which with many others, will appear in the next Number of the Critical Review.

Fox's History of James the Second.
Rose's translation of Parthenopex
de Blois.

Brooke's History of St. Helena.
Hunt's Critical Essays on the Per-

formers of the London Theatres. Hints on Evangelical Preaching, by

a Barrister; part II.
Strutt's Queen Hoo Hall.
Memoirs of Captain Carleton.
Sydney's Treatise of Powers.
Wyvill on Liberty of Conscience.
Gladwin's Gulistan of Sady.

ART. I.-A History of the early Part of the Reign of James the Second; with an introductory Chapter. By the Right Hon. Charles James Fox. To which is added an Appen. dix. 4to. 11. 16s. Miller.

WHERE expectation has been raised very high, disappointment is apt to ensue. Even in the common occurrences of life, the usual effect of anticipation is to blunt the edge of enjoyment; and, in proportion as the sensation of expectancy is carried to a higher pitch, the greater are, commonly, the mortification and disgust. We are wont to mistake the possibilities of gratification; and in imagination to carry them beyond what is compatible with the state of human imperfection. There are some characters of whom our admiration is so strong, and our conceptions of their ability and genius so elevated, that we expect in their productions a degree of intellectual excellence either greater than their capacity, or beyond what, in the circumstances in which they are placed, it would be impossible for them to at

tain.

Expectation has seldom been more vividly excited than by the present history of Mr. Fox. The greatness of his character, the splendour of his eloquence, the independence of his principles, his large and comprehensive acquaintance with human affairs, his philosophic turn of thought, his wisdom, his sagacity, his discrimination, his unvitiated love of li❤ berty, and his unalterable attachment to truth, all conspired, from the time the in which publication was announced, to awaken the most lively curiosity. Some persons indeed have complained that the work has disappointed their expectations. CRIT. REV. Vol. 14. August, 1908.

But instead of ascribing this to the defects of the execution, we ought perhaps to impute it to unreasonable expectancy,or to vitiated taste. But, whatever maybe the case with others, for ourselves we can at least declare that we hardly antici pated any intellectual pleasure or instruction which has not been amply supplied by the perusal of the work. Making those abatements, which candour will always make for a posthumous publication, and more particularly a performance which is only a detached fragment of a larger design, which had not received the last revision and corrections of the author, we do most sincerely declare, that we have never read any portion of history, whether ancient or modern, with more unmingled satisfaction. A vein of philosophy incorporated with the most genuine love of liberty, and with the most unfeigned dislike of tyranny and oppression, pervades the whole. The reflections are not only golden but of the purest gold. In them there is no alloy. They shew that the author united the elevated mind of the sage with the benign and gentle disposition of the christian. Throughout the whole there is a love of truth which takes nothing on trust which it can ascertain by scrupulous research; which examines with a critical eye not only the larger features, but the minutest lines, not only the massy parts but the circumstantial niceties of every transaction. This is that essential qualification of an historian, without which he is the author only of poetry or romance. The laws of his torical composition never authorise even a single deviation from truth, however trivial and insignificant it may seem.

The narrative of history has no concern except with mat-ters of fact; and the historian, who is impressed with a proper sense of his duty, will not for the sake of heightening the colouring, or multiplying the embellishments, or invigo rating the impression, admit any accessaries which did not actually coexist with, or make a part of, the fact which he describes. When Hume intimates that, previous to his exe cution, Charles the first was confined in such a situation that he could hear the noise of the workmen fixing up his scaffold, he asserted au infamous falsehood in order to produce a temporary effect. His object was to excite the indignation of the reader towards the brutality of the republicans, and to increase his sympathy for the sufferings of the king. The invention of such an incident was a scandalous violation of the morality of history. But Mr. Hume, with all his preten, sions to philosophy, had not veracity sufficient for an his torian. His object was to serve a particular purpose and to support a particular hypothesis; and this renders him almost