their price and one may consider the poetical descriptions in this volume, as he does the beautiful colors and delicious odour of the flowers of which it treats, not as being essential parts, but as adding to the beauty, and increasing the value of the plant.

The performance on the PLEASURES OF FRIENDSHIP COMmences with a well written invocation to friendship and describes its consolation to our first parents immediately after the fall. The innocent attachments of early childhood next solicit attention and are depicted with much feeling. Early friendships, as recollected in old age, are represented as affording comfort to the latest moments in the following lines:

"The cherish'd memory of things long past,
Shall hold the lamp, and brighten to the last.
Though all around seems wrapt in endless gloom,
Friendship still gleams upon the opening tomb;
And the fond hope inspired by pious love,

Draws back the veil where spirits meet above."

Friendship as an universal feeling is next considered, and illustrated by a variety of examples in the selection of which is displayed not only correct taste, but considerable literary knowledge.

The influence of works of Art in recalling to our imagination the actions and features of distant or departed friends, is finely described in the story of the Maid of Corinth, who, when about to be separated from the young man to whom she was attached, accidentally observing the shadow of his face on the wall by candle light-traced over the outlines and carried the sketch to her father, who, being a potter, filled it up with clay and formed a bust, which he hardened in the fire with the rest of his earthenware.

Friendships formed in religious institutions, and the pleasures of friendship in solitude, are next noticed; and we should not have been displeased had this part of the subject been entered into more fully. Persons of both sexes in these situations are more likely to form strong attachments, than those who mix indiscriminately with the world. If they have been placed there in the early periods of life, that warmth of imagination which is inseparable from early years, having no variety of objects on which to act, will not be confined to self, nor yet be absorbed in religious contemplation, and therefore it will exert itself in the shape of affection on some individual, and will be increased in proportion as it is confined. Or if the seclusion has taken place late in life in consequence of disgust with the world, the recluse will discover that mere retirement affords not the relief

he expected; and meeting with another who has retired from similar motives, a mutual and strong attachment will be the consequence.

The sacrifices of friendship are not forgotten; but are exemplified by the conduct of Virgil, who refrained from indulging in lyric compositions, in consequence of his intimacy with Horace; and in dramatic writings, lest he should diminish the glory of his friend Varius.

That fashionable life is inimical to friendship, Mrs. Rowden declares in the following expressive manner :

"But say ye giddy herd, who tread the maze
Of Fashion's court and echo Folly's praise,
Why, mid this specious semblance of delight,
The drooping spirit and the sleepless night?
Why, mid this fairy scene, the half-drawn sigh,
The fading languor of th' averted eye?

'Tis that the shrine to which these vot'ries bend
Can gain no heart, or fix one faithful friend."

Numerous instances of the force of friendship amongst the ancients are next recorded; such as the Theban Band, The Scythian Hordes, Achilles and Patroclus, &c. &c. But although these are notable examples, and though Lord Byron's fashionable friend so shamefully neglected him, we could, were we so disposed, produce as striking examples of exalted modern friendship, as ever adorned the characters of the ancients,

In speaking of the soothing power of friendship in sickness, we meet with the following lines :

"Benignant Spirit! in that trying scene
Shed o'er the parting soul thy ray serene,
Blest harbinger of peace, whose syren strain
Can charm despair and lull the throb of pain,
And best prepare it for those realms above,
Where all is harmony and perfect love."

The pleasures of friendship in prosperity and adversity are finely contrasted, and the fatal effects of the friendship of the wicked on the young and unsuspecting, well imagined and not ill described.

"Tis thus the gallant youth who pants to claim
The brightest laurels in the wreath of fame,
Gay, open, unsuspecting, artless, warm,
With heart nor plotting nor suspecting harm,
Too early launchi'd on life's tempestuous stream,
Finds all his promised hopes a fleeting dream.
Beneath the smile that won his easy heart,
Lurk'd cruel malice and insidious art:

Duped where he trusted, where he loved betray'd, ́

Too sad to hope, too proud to ask for aid;

With shame reviews the fatal paths he trod,

And meets, uncall'd, the presence of his God."

The Second Book treats of connubial, parental, and filial affection, illustrated by a variety of well-selected instances; and the work concludes with a recommendation of the example of that divine friend to the human race, who made so glorious a sacrifice for its sake. Mrs. Rowden's general address to friendship, contains the following lines:

"Friendship, blest power! to thee alone is given
To blend the vast extremes of earth and heaven,
'Tis thine to soften through this boundless frame,
Each jarring int'rest and divided claim;
Discordant tastes in perfect union draw,
To bend revolting passions to thy law.
Though nature, prejudice, and clime oppose
To make the sons of earth the bitt'rest foes,
'Tis thine with chains of adamant to bind
The rebel heart, and center mind in mind.”

ART. IV. Shakspeare's Himself Again; or the Language of the Poet Asserted being a full, but dispassionate examen

the readings and interpretations of the several editors. The whole comprised in a series of notes, sixteen hundred in number, and further illustrative of the more difficult passages in his plays. To the various editions of which, the present volumes form a complete and necessary supplement. By Andrew Becket, author of "Lucianus Redivivus," &c. &c. 2 vols. 8vo. 20s. London, Law and Whittaker, &c. 1815.

We do not much like the taste of this title; but we think that the future editions of Shakspeare will be greatly benefited by the book. The author's object seems to be the restoration of Shakspeare's text to the state in which it is found in the old copies, and the condemnation of black-letter annotation whereever it is multiplied not to illustrate the thought, but to show the recurrence of the word. He accordingly makes very free, in his preface, with the drudgery of Mr. Steevens, points out many inconsistencies in the editorial opinions of Dr. Johnson, and endeavours to rescue Warburton from the obloquy which has been thrown upon him as an editor of Shakspeare. Warburton is

"held by Mr. Becket as the best, and Steevens as the worst, of the poet's critics." "The notes and observations of any worth," he says, "and which (Mr. B. never uses this relative without the conjunction and) are subscribed with the name of Steevens, are known to have proceeded from the pen of Capel. In like manner, those attributed to Theobald, and which can be said to be of any value are as certainly the work of Warburton." We have no very high opinion of the taste of Mr. Steevens or muy of the readers of all such reading as was never read," and think that they whose trade is words, soon lose all sound relish for ideas. Mr. Steevens read Shakspeare solely with a view to his craft, and though he was familiar with every word in his plays, never felt the spirit of his poetry. Of Shakspeare's beautiful sonnets, he said that an act of parliament would not be strong enough to compel one to peruse them; and yet this fastidious reader could wade through volume after volume of black-letter rubbish, and pamphlets of defunct time, to glean a word of scurrility or obscenity similar to one which happened to be used in some low scene, written perhaps by one of the underlings of Shakspeare's stage; but then this was "in the way of his vocation." Thus too Mr. Malone read Ben Jonson solely with a view to illustrating Shakspeare's words; and having (as Hamlet says to Polonius) read nothing in Ben Jonson but words, words, words, would have it forsooth that "the matter was slander," and that the authors of the encomiastic poem "To the memory of his beloved Shakspeare," and of those commendatory lines beneath his picture in the first collection of his plays which was ever made, envied and hated Shakspeare! Thus also these note-manufacturers confessed that they read Fletcher only for the purpose of annotating Shakspeare, never dreaming that he too was a dramatic poet of the first class. In short, they had no right to pretend to like Shakspeare: they did not come honestly by their admiration of him. He gave them a name, and they were grateful to him in their mistaken way, by darkening him with illustration, and weakening him with aid. They no more relished him than a grocer relishes the figs which he sells to gain a livelihood. Dr. Warburton certainly entered more than others into the spirit of his author, and though some of his emendations have incurred the just ridicule of the author of the Canons of Criticism, yet he sometimes hazards a noble conjecture which (as Dr. Johnson said upon one occasion) almost puts the critic on a level with the poet. He likewise refines too much, and clothes his poet in his own school-learning, clapping both his gown and his cap on

him; but he is even then sometimes not far from right. "Shakspeare (as Dryden says) was naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature: he looked inwards, and found her there." Warburton and Johnson are almost the only commentators of the poet who venture upon criticism. The former is the more fanciful critic, but for that reason of a more kindred genius with his author: the good sense and strong judgment of the latter, kept him right in his criticism, whenever his prejudices did not stand in his way, or when he gave himself time to reflect. But he judged too much from hand to mouth, and is said never to have read Shakspeare through till he was called upon to become his editor. Mr. Becket almost deifies Dr. Warburton. He says that,

"In no one instance can he be charged with absurdity or with inconsistency of any kind. All with him is uniformly grand and striking, and his eccentricities, if so they must be called, demand and indeed extort, like to those of the Divinity whose works he is considering, at once our admiration and respect. In a word, nothing appears laboured in him: the master-hand is discoverable in almost all: not but that we occasionally suspect him to have produced, by a sort of impatient, yet happy, dash of the pencil, that foam which is exhibited on his canvas, and which has been mistaken for the work of art." Pref. pp. xviii-xix.

This ambiguous word foam would be turned to an unfortunate account in the hands of an Edwards. For ourselves, we respect the talents of the departed Bishop of Gloucester, and think that Pope knew as little of his subject when he talked of "the dull duty of an editor" as when he wrote that line,

Slashing Bentley with his desp'rate hook.” Warburton, it is true, like Bentley, altered his author's text considerably but then the notoriously corrupt state of Shakspeare's text as laid before him must be taken into the account; and it must be recollected, that the poet had turned all the children of his brain loose upon the stage, where they were suffered to be polluted with the language of players, by whom they were introduced to "groundlings" of no better taste than themselves. These players were the poet's first editors. Many of his plays were transcribed from their prompt-books, and eked out with compositions caught up in the theatre from the words as they came out of their mouths. What excellence could be expected from a text so formed?-The blunders of transcribers of the ancient classics are nothing compared with the wilful perversions and interpolations of inferior poets and players. and players. Conjectural criticism must be allowed some latitude; and though we suspect that Mr. Becket's eulogy of Dr. Warburton is meant