faults of the compilation are these:-First, the characters are too hastily introduced and despatched, and their language clipped too closely. They are "curtailed of their fair proportions." Jack Cade and his rabble are put into strait-waistcoats, as a body might say, and the armourer and his man are cut short in their dispute most abruptly and unsatisfactorily. We see nothing of Talbot, and missing him is like walking among the Elgin Marbles and seeing an empty place where the Theseus had reclined. In the next place the party is too much modernized. We speak of it as we heard it. Again, the events are not harmonized well, and Shakespeare felt that they could not be put together in less than fifteen acts, "and we would take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds." The present play appears to go on by fits and starts, and to be made up too much of unmatchable events. It is inlaid with facts of different colour, and we can see the cracks which the joiner's hand could not help leaving. After these little objections, all our observations on this compilation are full of praise. Great ingenuity is displayed, and we should think Kean had a hand in it. The author has extracted veins of gold from a huge mine, and he is liberal enough to share it with other people. The workings of Richard's mind are brought out as it were by the hand of the anatomist, and all the useless parts are cut away and laid aside. But with all we fear the public will not take the obligation as it is meant, and as it ought to be received. The English people do not care one fig about Shakespeare,— only as he flatters their pride and their prejudices. We are not sure that this has not been remarked before, though we do not remember where; nevertheless it is our firm opinion. But let us say a few words of the actors. Kean stands like a tower. He is "all power, passion, self-will." His animations flow from his lips as "musical. as is Apollo's lute." It is impossible to point out any peculiar and little felicities where the whole piece of acting is of no mingled web. If we were to single a favourite part, we should choose that in which he parts with his son, young Rutland, just before the battle. It was pathetic to oppression. Our hearts swelled with the feeling of tears, which is a deeper feeling than the starting of them in the eye. His tongue lingered on the following passage as fondly as his eyes clung to the object which occasioned them, and as tenderly as the heart dwells and dotes upon some long-loved object :— "Bring in my dear boy, Rutland. [Enter RUTLAND with attendants. If I should fall, I leave thee to thy brothers, His death was very great. But Kean always "dies as erring men do die." The bodily functions wither up, and the mental faculties hold out till they crack. It is an extinguishment, not a decay. The hand is agonized with death; the lip trembles with the last breath, as we see the autumn leaf thrill in the cold wind of evening. The very eye-lid dies. The acting of Kean is Shakespearian-he will fully understand what we mean. There is little to be said of the rest. Pope as a Cardinal (how aptly chosen) balances a red hat. Holland wears insipid white hair, and is even more insipid than the hair that he carries. Rae plays the adulterous Suffolk, and proves how likely he is to act amiss. Wallack, as young Clifford, "towers above his sex." Mr. Maywood is more miserable in Henry VI. than winters or wet nights, or Death on a pale horse, or want of money, or deceitful friends, or any other crying evil. The comic parts are sadly mangled, owing to illness of Munden and Oxberry. Jack Cade dies of a lock-jaw; and Dick the butcher is become a grave man. Mrs. Glover chews the blank verse past endurance; her comedy is round and comfortable; her tragedy is worse than death. One thing we are convinced of on looking over the three parts of Henry, from which this play is gleaned; which is, that Shakespeare was the only lonely and perfectly happy creature God ever formed. He could never have a mate,-being most unmatchable. III. MARGINALIA FROM THE FOLIO. A Midsummer Night's Dream.1 These are the forgeries of jealousie, Or in the beached margent of the sea, To dance our ringlets to the whistling Winde, THERE is something exquisitely rich and luxurious in In this play there are but two pages which show any trace of Keats's hand. They are in Act II, and bear the above note. if bowers were not exuberant and covert enough for fairy sports until their second sprouting-which is surely the most bounteous overwhelming of all Nature's goodnesses. She steps forth benignly in the spring and her conduct is so gracious that by degrees all things are becoming happy under her wings and nestle against her bosom : she feels this love and gratitude too much to remain selfsame, and unable to contain herself buds forth the overflowings of her heart about the middle summer. O Shakespeare thy ways are but just searchable! The thing is a piece of profound verdure. Troylus and Cressida.1 I have (as when the Sunne doth light a-scorne) ACT I [SCENE 1]. I have not read this copy much and yet have had time to find many faults-however 'tis certain that the Commentators have contrived to twist many beautiful passages into commonplaces as they have done with respect to "a scorn" which they have hocus pocus'd into "a storm" thereby destroying the depth of the similetaking away all the surrounding atmosphere of Imagery and leaving a bare and unapt picture. Now however beautiful a Comparison may be for a bare aptnessShakespeare is seldom guilty of one-he could not be content to "the sun lighting a storm," but he gives us Apollo in the act of drawing back his head and forcing a smile upon the world-"the Sun doth light a-scorn." 1 1 Troylus and Cressida is much underlined throughout, and has the above note at the opening of the first Act. The reading a storm is persisted in in the Globe edition. Pandarus.-But to proove to you that Hellen loves him, A most delicate touch-Juno being the Goddess of Childbirth. Sith every action that hath gone before, ACT I [SCENE 3]. The genius of Shakespeare was an in[n]ate universality-wherefore he had the utmost atchievement of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly gaze. He could do easily Man's utmost. His plans of tasks to come were not of this world-if what he purposed to do hereafter would not in his own Idea “answer the aim" how tremendous must have been his Conception of Ultimates. Blunt wedges rive hard knots: the seeded Pride In ranke Achilles, must or now be cropt, Or shedding breed a Nursery of like evil ACT I [SCENE 3]. "Blowne up" &c. One's very breath while leaning over these pages is held for fear of blowing this line away -as easily as the gentlest breeze Robs dandelions of their fleecy Crowns. Sweete, rouse yourselfe; and the weake wanton Cupid |