ortion to the vast mass of perplexing
riddles that have been satisfactorily settled that, like an infinitely
small quantity in mathematics, they may be neglected. Therefore, let
not him who wishes to read his Shakespeare unalloyed by notes and
textual comment, despise the painful critic or accuse him of playing
at loggats with the words of Shakespeare. It is through the labors of
critics that the text is in such a shape that the work-a-day reader
can read it at all. In the Folios and Quartos we see Shakespeare
as through a glass darkly, but, thanks to those drudges, the
commentators, in numberless places we can now see him face to face.

The Orphan of Pimlico, and other Sketches, Fragments and Drawings.
By William Makepeace Thackeray. With some notes by Anne Isabella
Thackeray. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

The artistic sense--the vivid conception of things and persons in
their external aspects and with a constant regard to their groupings
and the effect upon the spectator--made itself peculiarly prominent
in all that Thackeray wrote. It is not that he gives us elaborate
descriptions: this, indeed, is the resource of writers who are lacking
in the faculty mentioned, and are consequently obliged to reach the
result, if at all, by inferior means. His power lay in the selection
of traits which were strictly characteristic, in making every act or
phrase indicative of individuality. An astute critic, therefore--one
gifted with that keenness of vision to which the exercise of the
office unhappily implies a claim--should have been able to infer
Thackeray's dexterity with the pencil from the methods of his literary
work. There was, however, no room for conjecture on this point, as the
fact was early a matter of notoriety, and many of the illustrations
in his books were known to be from his own sketches. Recently, too, a
publication containing some of his earliest and slightest work in this
way attracted considerable attention, with the fortunate result of
calling out the volume before us, which embodies the best specimens
of his skill reproduced by a method that renders every line an exact
transcript, and accompanied by facsimiles of whatever written text or
comment appeared on the same page. Many of them partake more or less
of the nature of caricature, and if the execution alone be considered,
they show that Thackeray might, in default of talents of a different
order, have pursued this line with as much success as s