We may as well give the remainder of Aubrey's anecdotes in connexion with Shakspeare, in addition to what we have already given with reference to his father being a butcher, &c. After telling us that "he was a handsome well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready, pleasant, and smooth wit," he tells the story of the Grendon constable, and thus proceeds:—

"Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men daily wherever they came. One time, as he was at the tavern at Stratford-upon-Avon, one Coombes, an old rich usurer, was to be buried; he makes there this extemporary epitaph :

'Ten in the hundred the Devil allows,

But Coombes will have twelve, he swears and vows;
If any one asks who lies in this tomb,

Hoh! quoth the Devil, 't is my John o Coombe.'

Sir Wm. Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best comedian we have now) say that he had a most prodigious wit, and did admire his natural parts beyond all other dramatic writers. He was wont to say that he never blotted out a line in his life; said Ben Jonson, 'I wish he had blotted out a thousand.' His comedies will remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum; now our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombities, that twenty years hence they will not be understood."

But we have more trustworthy evidence than that of John Aubrey for believing that Shakspere, however indispensable a protracted residence in London might be to his interests and those of his family, never cast aside the link which bound him to his native town. In 1596 his only son died, and in Stratford he was buried. The parochial register gives us the melancholy record of this loss :

But this event, afflicting as it must have been, did not render the great poet's native town less dear to him. There his father and mother, there his wife and daughters, there his sister still lived. In 1597 he purchased the principal house in Stratford. It was built by Sir Hugh Clopton, in the reign of Henry VII., and was devised by him under the name of the great house. Dugdale describes it as "a fair house built of brick and timber." It appears to have been sold out of the Clopton family before it was purchased by Shakspere. In the poet's will it is described as "all that capital messuage or tenement, with the appurtenances, in Stratford aforesaid, called the New Place." The London residence of Shakspere at this period is stated to have been in Southwark, near the Bear Garden. It is now incontestably proved that in the year previous to 1596 Shakspere held a much more important rank as a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre than in 1589; and that the Globe Theatre also belonged to the body of proprietors of which he was one. A petition to the privy council, presented in 1596, was found in the State Paper Office a few years ago, in which the names of the petitioners stand as follows:

"The humble petition of Thomas Pope, Richard Burbage, John Hemmings, Augustine Phillips, William Shakespeare, William Kempe, William Sly, Nicholas Tooley, and others, servants to the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain to her Majesty."

There is a tradition that the valuable estate of New Place was purchased by Shakspere through the munificent assistance of Lord Southampton. Rowe tells the story as follows:

"What grace soever the Queen conferred upon him, it was not to her only he owed the fortune which the reputation of his wit made. He had the honour to meet with many great and uncommon marks of favour and friendship from the Earl of Southampton, famous in the histories of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Essex. It was to that noble Lord he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis.' There is one instance so singular in the magnificence of this noble patron of Shakspeare's, that, if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to."

poetry and learning, with most honourable ardour, at a very early period of his life. Camden speaks of him as cultivating literature in the first flower of his age. Chapman, in one of the poems accompanying his translation of the Iliad,' calls him "learn'd Earl." Florio, in 1598, says, "As to me and many more, the glorious and gracious sunshine of your honour hath infused light and life." Further, the honest old Italian speaks out his obligations very plainly in addressing the Earl as one "in whose pay and patronage I have lived some years." According to the feelings of those days, it would have been no discredit to Shakspere to have received a magnificent present from Southampton. The word "patronage" then implied, without any dishonour to the patronized, a payment in money. The sum stated by Rowe, on the authority of Davenant, to have been presented by Southampton to Shakspere, appears certainly a most extraordinary exaggeration of the amount of some more reasonable present. It is scarcely necessary that we should assess what that present was. Malone thinks it was a hundred pounds. The tradition came to Rowe from a very questionable authority-from one who pretended to an intimate knowledge of Shakspere's affairs, which he never could have possessed. Davenant was not ten years of age when Shakspere died. It is not necessary, to account for Shakspere's property in the theatres, or even for his purchase of New Place at Stratford, that we should imagine that some extraordinary prodigality of bounty had been lavished on him. He obtained his property in the theatre by his honest labours, steadily exerted, though with unequalled facility, from his earliest manhood. The profits which he received not only enabled him to maintain his family, but to create an estate; and his was not a solitary case. Edward Alleyn, who was a contemporary of Shakspere, a player and a theatrical proprietor, realized a fortune; and he founded Dulwich College. The intercourse between Shakspere and Lord Southampton appears to have been one of mutual respect and cordial friendship; not a friendship which could imply large obligations from high intellect to high station. We have already given the dedication of 'Venus and Adonis;' it is manly and respectful— not implying any very close acquaintance, asking no favours, expressing gratitude for none already conferred. The dedication to the Rape of Lucrece,' published in the following year, speaks in some respects a different language

:

"To the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield.

moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness. Your Lordship's in all duty, "WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE." There is here the expression of strong friendship, according to the term of that day, "love." Friends were then called lovers. But there is, also, profound respect. Shakspere, we believe, would not have written this dedication for money's worth. Drake has pointed out the resemblance between this dedication and the 26th Sonnet, and the similarity is certainly remarkable:

"Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine

May make scem bare, in wanting words to show it;
But that I hope some good conceit of thine

In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it:
Till whatsoever star that guides by moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving,

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:

Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,

Till then, not show my head where thou may'st prove me." It appears to us that this Sonnet is literally a dedication, which accompanied some performance of the poet thus privately inscribed to an illustrious friend. It is, however, shrouded in the mystery which hangs over those very remarkable productions, first published in 1609, under the following title:'Shake-speare's Sonnets. Never before imprinted.' It has been held, especially by the German critics, that these Sonnets have not been sufficiently regarded as a store of materials for the biography of Shakspere. This objection has been removed within the last few years, by the publication of two works whose titles would appear to leave us nothing to desire. The first is, 'On the Sonnets of Shakespeare, identifying the Person to whom they are addressed; and elucidating several Points in the Poet's History. By James Boaden, Esq.' (1837.) The second, published in 1838, is entitled 'Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, being his Sonnets clearly developed; with his Character, drawn chiefly from his Works. By Charles Armitage Brown.' Mr. Brown affixes this motto to his work: "With this key, simple as it may appear, every difficulty is unlocked, and we have nothing but pure uninterrupted biography." We should hail, in common with all the world, any contribution to the "pure uninterrupted biography" of any portion of Shakspere's career; and especially of autobiography. But we cannot think that we have yet found this treasure. There are, no doubt, in Shakspere's Sonnets repeated expressions of thoughts and feelings strictly personal; but it is impossible, we think, on the other hand, to receive these poems as a continuous expression of these personal thoughts and feelings, which alone could entitle them to the name of "autobiographical poems." The subject is one in which we honestly confess the extreme difficulty of forming any decided opinion; and it is possible that our opinion, as it is now formed, may be qualified by our own future reflection, or by the suggestions of others. But, as it is manifestly impossible to attempt a 'Life of Shakspere,' however imperfect, without a somewhat full reference to these Sonnets, we are bound to offer our readers the best opinion which we have derived from an attentive study of them.

We have already quoted a passage from Francis Meres which we must here repeat: "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare; witness his ‘Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece,' his sugared sonnets among his private friends, &c." There can be no doubt that the "sugared sonnets" were circulated in manuscript amongst Shakspere's

private friends." The 'Venus and Adonis,' and the 'Lucrece,' were printed; but Meres appeals equally to these published and unpublished works to show that "the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakspere." This praise was printed in 1598; and it must be assumed that the "sugared sonnets" had obtained a reputation in the literary and courtly circles of that time. It was then the fashion to circulate poems in manuscript; and "the request of friends," which Pope, a century afterwards, so justly ridiculed, was then a real motive for seeking an extended publicity through the press. But Shakspere, we are perfectly certain, never consented to the publication of these “sugared sonnets." It has been doubted whether the Sonnets published in 1609 were those mentioned by Meres. But we would remark that the notoriety which Meres had given to the "sugared sonnets" incited a publisher, in 1599, to produce something which should gratify the general curiosity. In that year appeared a collection of poems bearing the name of Shakspere, and published by W. Jaggard, entitled The Passionate Pilgrim.' This little collection contains two Sonnets which are also given in the larger collection of 1609. They are those numbered cxxxviii and exliv in that collection. In the modern reprints of The Passionate Pilgrim' it is usual to omit these two Sonnets without explanation, because they have been previously given in the larger collection of Sonnets. But it is important to know that, previous to the publication of 'The Passionate Pilgrim,' Shakspere, if the Sonnets are to be taken as autobiographical, had thus described himself:

"When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies; That she might think me some untutor'd youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtilties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue; On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love's best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told: Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be." Thus, before 1599, we know not how much earlier, the best of Shakspere's years were past; he was old, according to his own account. We know, indeed, that men of middle life, men between forty and fifty, were in those days termed old; a fact which indicates partly the increased average duration of life at the present time, and partly the greater reverence in which the head of a family was formerly held by his children and dependants. But in the year in which The Passionate Pilgrim' was published Shakspere was only thirty-five. The term 'old' was not therefore strictly applicable to him. But the 73rd Sonnet of the larger collection expresses the sentiment not more strongly though far more beautifully:—

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare, ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,.
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

We have evidence, then, that if the Sonnets, collectively, ar to be taken as "autobiographical," they belong to the middle period of Shakspere's life, however they may refer to the autumn of his years, the twilight of his day, the ashes of his youth. They belong to the period when the great poet had yet to write fifteen of his most wonderful plays,-some of them running over with all the luxuriance of a youthful imagination. But The Passionate Pilgrim' contains a Sonnet, not in the larger

at once disposes of the assertion that he was the only begetter, assuming the "begetter" is used in the sense of inspirer. Chalmers disposes of this meaning of the word very cleverly: "W. H. was the bringer forth of the sonnets. Beget is derived by Skinner from the Anglo-Saxon begettan, obtinere. Johnson adopts this derivation and sense: so that begetter, in the quaint language of Thorp the bookseller, Pistol the ancient, and such affected persons, signified the obtainer: as to get and getter, in the present day, mean obtain and obtainer, or to procure and the procurer." There can be no doubt of the correctness of this definition. But then, on the other hand, it is held that, when the bookseller wishes Mr. W. H. "that eternity promised by our ever-living poet," he means promised him. This inference we must think is somewhat strained. But let us return to the "leading idea" which has run through the first seventeen Sonnets, or stanzas. It glides afterwards into another theme, the "eternity promised" by the ever-living poet. In the 18th Sonnet we have this declaration :

"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

The address seems to hold to the same person till the end, of the 25th stanza, perhaps through the 26th. That we have already quoted, to point out its resemblance to the dedication to Lord Southampton. But the 27th Sonnet, or stanza, opens entirely in a different spirit. We have here no exaggerated praise of his friend, no "rapturous devotedness, no idolatry of admiring love:" we use Mr. Hallam's words. But, more than all, the poet employs no turbid praise in speaking of his own power. His lines are not now described as "eternal;" it is no longer,

"My love shall in my verse ever live young." There is an unreality about all this, a violation of all our previous conceptions of Shakspere's character, which compel us to hesitate before we accept this first part of the poem as "autobiographical." Mr. Brown analyses the first twenty-six Sonnets, calling them "the first poem,-to his friend persuading him to marry." The "second poem" he considers to extend from Sonnet, or stanza, xxvii. to lv.-"to his friend who had robbed the poet of his mistress-forgiving him." But with the change of subject has arrived a most extraordinary change of sentiment. The Sonnets xxvii. to xxxii. are not only speci mens of some of the most exquisite poetry in our language, but they express sentiments far more consonant with the habitual tone of Shakspere's mind than the exaggerated devotion and the boastful promises of what has gone before. Look at these :

Xxx.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear times' waste;
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long-since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.

XXXI.

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead;
And there reigns love and all love's loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things remov'd, that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone;
Their images I lov'd I view in thee,
And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

XXXII.

If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bettering of the time;
And though they be outstripp'd by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.

O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought!
Had my friend's muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died, and poets better

prove,

Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love." These indeed look like autobiography; and we think that there are many circumstances connected with the mode in which the Sonnets were published, as well as in their internal evidence, to warrant us in receiving some as essentially dramatic,—that is, written in an assumed character; and some as strictly personal,-expressing the thoughts and feelings of the man William Shakspere.

The reader will have noticed the exquisite sentiment of the last lines we have just quoted, the proud humility, if we may so express ourselves, of the great poet comparing himself with

others:

"Had my friend's muse grown with his growing age."

We should scarcely imagine, if the poem were continuous, as Mr. Brown believes, that the last stanza of this second portion of it in his classification would conclude with these lines:"Not marble, not the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.” They contrast remarkably with the tone of the 32d Sonnet,— "These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover." Meres has a passage not already quoted: "As Ovid saith of his works

"Jamque opus exegi quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis,
Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas;"

and as Horace saith of his,

'Exegi monumentum ære perennius,' &c.;

so say I severally of Sir Philip Sidney's, Spenser's, Daniel's, Drayton's, Shakespeare's and Warner's works." What Ovid and Horace said is imitated in the 55th Sonnet. But we greatly doubt if what Meres would have said of Shakspere he would have said of himself, except in some assumed character, to which we have not the key. Ben Jonson, to whom a boastful spirit has with some justice been objected, never said anything so strong of his own writings; and he wrote with too much reliance, in this and other particulars, upon classical examples. The 33rd Sonnet to the 39th complain of some wrong, some neglect, which end in separation. The 40th to the 42nd prefer the charge that the poet's friend had robbed him of his mistress. But it is not necessary that we should receive this "leading idea" to understand several series of Sonnets which occur in this part. The 44th and the 45th, for example, might be addressed to any friend, to any relation, who was separated from him by distance :-to his wife, to his mother. Believing as we do that "W. H.," be he who he may, who put these poems in the hands of “T. T.,” the publisher, arranged them in the most arbitrary manner (of which there are many proofs), we believe that the principle of continuity, however ingeniously it may be maintained, is altogether fallacious. Where is the difficulty of imagining, with regard to poems of which each separate poem, sonnet, or stanza, is either a "leading idea," or its "variation," that, picked up as we believe they were from many quarters, the supposed connexion must be in many respects fanciful, in some a result of chance, mixing what the poet wrote in his own person, either in moments of elation or depression, with other apparently continuous stanzas that painted an imaginary character, indulging in all the warmth of an exaggerated friendship, in the complaints of an abused confidence, in the pictures of an unhallowed and unhappy love;

sometimes speaking with the real earnestness of true friendship and a modest estimation of his own merits; sometimes employing the language of an extravagant eulogy, and a more extravagant estimation of the powers of the man who was writing that eulogy? Suppose, for example, that in the leisure hours, we will say, of William Herbert Earl of Pembroke, and William Shakspere, the poet should have undertaken to address to the youth an argument why he should marry. There is nothing in the first seventeen Sonnets which might not have been written in the artificial tone of the Italian poetry, in the working out of this scheme. Suppose, again, that in other Sonnets the poet, in the same artificial spirit, complains that the friend has robbed him of his mistress, and that he forgives the falsehood. There is nothing in all this which might not have been written essentially as a work of fiction, received as a work of fiction,-handed about amongst "private friends" without the slightest apprehension that it would be regarded as an exposition of the private relations of two persons separated in rank as they probably were in their habitual intimacies,-of very different ages,-the one an avowedly profligate boy, the other a matured man. But this supposition does not exclude the idea that the poet had also, at various times, composed, in the same measure, other poems, truly expressing his personal feelings, with nothing inflated in their tone, perfectly simple and natural, offering praise, expressing love to his actual friends (in the language of the time "lovers"), showing regret in separation, dreading unkindness, hopeful of continued affection. These are also circulated amongst "private friends." Some "W. H." collects them together, ten, or twelve, or fifteen years after they have been written; and a publisher, of course, is found to give to the world any productions of a man so eminent as Shakspere. But who arranged them? Certainly not the poet himself: for those who believe in their continuity must admit that there are portions which it is impossible to regard as continuous. In the same volume with these Sonnets was published a most exquisite narrative poem, 'A Lover's Complaint.' The form of it entirely prevents any attempt to consider it autobiographical. The Sonnets, on the contrary, are personal in their form ; but it is not therefore to be assumed that they are all personal in their relation to the author. It is impossible to be assumed that they could have been printed with the consent of the author as they now stand. If he had meant in all of them to express his actual feelings and position, the very slightest labour on his part-a few words of introduction either in prose or verse-would have taken those parts which he would have naturally desired to appear like fiction, and which to us even now look like fiction, out of the possible range of reality. The same slight labour would, on the other hand, have classed amongst the real, apart from the artificial, those Sonnets which he would have desired to stand apart, and appear to us to stand apart, as the result of real moods of the poet's own mind. It is impossible for us to work out this idea in the space of this paper; but we may add one or two observations. With the 126th Sonnet terminates the constantly recurring address, which we believe to be in an assumed character, to "my lovely boy." The 127th Sonnet, without the slightest preparation, has for its subject "my mistress' eyes." Mr. Brown is here himself at fault. He makes the stanzas from 127 to 152 compose the sixth poem, but he says, "I suspect that some stanzas irrelevant to the subject have been introduced into the body of it." We have already given the 144th stanza, or Sonnet,—

"Two loves I have of comfort and despair,"

as taken from the 'The Passionate Pilgrim.' The 145th is a playful poem in the octo-syllabic stanza; very like one of the little love-poems of 'Love's Labour's Lost,' or 'As You Like It.' Immediately after follows this solemn contemplation of the soul's immortality :—

"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Fool'd by those rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,

And, death once dead, there's no more dying then."

No one can here imagine continuity. Of the two last Sonnets or stanzas of the collection Mr. Brown himself thus speaks: "The two Sonnets printed at the end, about Cupid and a nymph of Diana, belong to nothing but themselves.” We would ask, therefore, can these one hundred and fifty-four Sonnets be received as a continuous poem upon any other principle than that the author had written them continuously? If there are some parts which are acknowledged interpolations, may there not be other parts that are open to the same belief? If there are parts entirely different in their tone from the bulk of these Sonnets, may we not consider that one portion was meant to be artificial and another real,-that the poet sometimes spoke in an assumed character, sometimes in a natural one? This theory we know could not hold if the poet had himself arranged the sequence of these verses; but as it is manifest that two stanzas have been introduced from a poem printed ten years earlier, that others are acknowledged to be out of order, and others positively dragged in without the slightest connexion,-may we not carry the separation still further, and, believing that the "begetter"-the getter-up-ofthese Sonnets had levied contributions upon all Shakspere's "private friends,"-assume that he was indifferent to any arrangement which might make each portion of the poem tell its own history? We do not take up, therefore, these poems to "seize a clue which innumerable passages give us, and suppose that they allude to a youth of high rank as well as personal beauty and accomplishment, in whose favour and intimacy, according to the base prejudices of the world, a player and a poet, though he were the author of Macbeth,' might be thought honoured;" and we do not feel "the strangeness of Shakspeare's humiliation in addressing him as a being before whose feet he crouched,-whose frown he feared,—whose injuries, and those of the most insulting kind, he felt and bewailed without resenting."

6

The view which we have taken of the probable admixture of the artificial and the real in the Sonnets, arising from their supposed original fragmentary state, necessarily leads to the belief that some are accurate illustrations of the poet's situa tion and feelings. It is collected from these Sonnets, for example, that his profession as a player was disagreeable to him; and this complaint, be it observed, might be addressed to any one of his family, or some honoured friend, such as Lord Southampton, as well as to the principal object of so many of those lyrics which contain a "leading idea, with variations:"

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide

Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."

But if from his professional occupation his nature was felt by him to be subdued to what it worked in,-if thence his name received a brand,—if vulgar scandal sometimes assailed him, -he had high thoughts to console him, such as were never before imparted to mortal. This was probably written in some period of dejection, when his heart was ill at ease, and he looked upon the world with a slight tinge of indifference, if not of dislike. Every man of high genius has felt something of this. It was reserved for the highest to throw it off, "like dew-drops from the lion's mane." After a very full consideration of Shakspere's dramatic works, we are come to the con* Hallam's 'Literature of Europe,' vol. iii.