LECTURES ON THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. BY WILLIAM HAZLITT. wwwww NEW-YORK: WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY. 1845. AS A TRIBUTE TO PUBLIC VIRTUE AND PRIVATE WORTH, AND AS A MEMORIAL OF LONG AND TRIED FRIENDSHIP, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, IN THE NAME OF ITS AUTHOR, ΤΟ BASIL MONTAGU. CONTENTS. PAGE ADVERTISEMENT TO THE LAST LONDON EDITION, BY THE AUTHOR'S SON. THE former editions of the Lectures, originally delivered by the author at the Surrey Institution in 1818, and published in the same year, having become exhausted, the present reprint has been undertaken, for the purpose of supplying the constant and increasing demand which is made for it. There is no feature in the retrospect of the last few years, more important and more delightful than the steady advance of an improved taste in literature: and both as a cause and as a consequence of this, the works of William Hazlitt, which heretofore have been duly appreciated only by the few, are now having ample justice done them by the many. With reference to the present work, the Edinburgh Review eloquently observes, “Mr. Hazlitt possesses one noble quality at least for the office which he has chosen, in the intense admiration and love which he feels for the great authors on whose excellencies he chiefly dwells. His relish for their beauties is so keen, that while he describes them, the pleasures which they impart become almost palpable to the sense, and we seem, scarcely in a figure, to feast and banquet on their 'nectared sweets.' He introduces us almost corporally into the divine presence of the great of old time-enables us to hear the living oracles of wisdom drop from their lips-and makes us partakers, not only of those joys which they diffused, but of those which they felt in the inmost recesses of their souls. He draws aside the veil of time with a hand tremulous with |