rward to the
great work in preparation.

Meanwhile we have gathered some little consolation from what is already
in our hands. Very often, on comparing the dramas of the present day
(not even excepting Mr. Tobin's) with those of Elizabeth's age, we have
been tempted to think that we were born too late, and to exclaim with
the poet--

"Infelix ego, non illo qui tempore natus,
Quo facilis natura fuit; sors O mea laeva
Nascendi, miserumque genus!" &c.

but we now see that unless Mr. Andrew Becket had also been produced at
that early period, we should have derived no extraordinary degree of
satisfaction from witnessing the first appearance of Shakespeare's
plays, since it is quite clear that we could not have understood them.

One difficulty yet remains. We scarcely think that the managers will
have the confidence, in future, to play Shakespeare as they have been
accustomed to do; and yet, to present him, as now so happily "restored,"
would, for some time at least, render him _caviare to the general_. We
know that Livius Andronicus, when grown hoarse with repeated
declamation, was allowed a second rate actor, who stood at his back and
spoke while he gesticulated, or gesticulated while he spoke. A hint may
be borrowed from this fact. We therefore propose that Mr. Andrew Becket
be forthwith taken into the pay of the two theatres, and divided between
them. He may then be instructed to follow the _dramatis personae_ of our
great poet's plays on the stage, and after each of them has made his
speech in the present corrupt reading, to pronounce aloud the words as
"restored" by himself. This may have an awkward effect at first; but a
season or two will reconcile the town to it; Shakespeare may then be
presented in his genuine language, or, as our author better expresses
it, be HIMSELF AGAIN.

ON MOXON'S SONNETS

[From _The Quarterly Review_, July, 1837]

_Sonnets by_ EDWARD MOXON. Second Edition. London, 1837.

This is quite a _dandy_ of a book. Some seventy pages of drawing-paper--
fifty-five of which are impressed each with a single sonnet in all the
luxury of type, while the rest are decked out with vignettes of nymphs
in clouds and bowers, and Cupids in rose-bushes and cockle-shells. And
all these coxcombries are the appendages of, as it seems to us, as
little intellect as the rings and brooches of the Exquisite in a modern
novel. We shall see presently, by what good fortune so moderate a poet
has found