f the editor's refinement of appreciation
and originality of view. The merely illustrative and explanatory notes
are also full and judicious, containing all that it is important the
reader should know, and a great deal which it will entertain him to
learn. In the Introductions to the several plays, too, we find many
_obiter dicta_ of Mr. White which are excellent in their clearness of
critical perception and conciseness of phrase. From that to the "Comedy
of Errors" we quote the following sentence:--

"Concerning the place and the period of the action of this play, it
seems that Shakspeare did not trouble himself to form a very accurate
idea. The Ephesus of "The Comedy of Errors" is much like the Bohemia of
"The Winter's Tale,"--a remote, unknown place, yet with a familiar and
imposing name, and therefore well suited to the purposes of one who, as
poet and dramatist, cared much for men and little for things, and to
whose perception the accidental was entirely eclipsed by the essential.
Anachronisms are scattered through it with a profusion which could only
be the result of entire indifference,--in fact, of an absolute want of
thought on the subject."--Vol. III. 189.

We think this could not be better said, if only we might supplant
"things" with the more precise word "facts"; for about _things_
Shakspeare was never careless. It is only that deciduous foliage of
facts which every generation leaves heaps of behind it dry, and dead,
that he rustles through with eyes so royally unconcerned. As a good
example of Mr. White's style, we should be inclined to cite the
Introduction to "Love's Labor's Lost," from which we detach this single
crystal:--

"It is ever the ambitious way of youthful genius to aim at novelty of
form in its first essays, while yet in treatment it falls unconsciously
into a vein of reminiscence; afterward it is apt to return to
established forms, and to show originality of treatment."

The temptation which too easily besets an editor of Shakspeare is to
differ, if possible, from everybody who has gone before him, though but
as between the N.E. and N.N.E. points in the circumference of a hair. We
do not find Mr. White guilty in this respect for what he has done, but
sometimes for what he has left undone in allowing the Folio text to
remain. The instance that has surprised us most is his not admitting
(_As You Like it_, Act iv. Sc. 1) the reading,--"The foolish _coroners_
of that age found it was Hero of