Victor; but "more especially from the Biographia Dramatica," we should
say, the weakest source of the four. Malone's Supplement to his Edition
of Shakspeare has entirely supplied thirteen pages of Playhouse
Notices;--and here the curtain falls--sans Index, or the Author's
Farewell.

There are three Engravings--a stunted Frontispiece from Wouverman's
Hawking Party, a Plan of Olympia, and the Tomb of Scaurus--the two
latter belonging, to use Mr. Smith's words, rather to "learned lore
and antiquarian pedantry," than a book of popular interest. Even had
Mr. Smith selected cuts of the Archery Meeting at Harrow, or the
Staffordshire Morris Dance Window, he would better have consulted the
gratification of his readers. In short, there are few subjects that
admit of more delightful illustration, literary or graphic, than the
"Festivals, Games, and Amusements" of "Merry England;" yet, to do these
topics justice, requires careful compilation, condensation, and tasteful
arrangement, upon neither of which points can we congratulate Mr.
Smith's judgment in the specimen before us. Probably the author has been
so long accustomed to indulge his fancy in ten shilling volumes of
"historical tales," that he finds it difficult to restrain himself to
books of facts: if this be the case, we should say that Mr. Smith is not
just the person to furnish the "nation" with a history of "Festivals,
Games, and Amusements, Ancient and Modern."

[4] See Mirror, vol. xiii. p. 259.

* * * * *

LORD BYRON.

(_From Moore's "Life,"_ Vol. II.)

To those who have, from his childhood, traced him through these pages,
it must be manifest, I think, that Lord Byron was not formed to be
long-lived.--Whether from any hereditary defect in his organization--as
he himself, from the circumstance of both his parents having died young,
concluded--or from those violent means he so early took to counteract
the natural tendency of his habit, and reduce himself to thinness, he
was, almost every year, as we have seen, subject to attacks of
indisposition, by more than one of which his life was seriously
endangered. The capricious course which he at all times pursued
respecting diet--his long fastings, his expedients for the allayment of
hunger, his occasional excesses in the most unwholesome food, and,
during the latter part of his residence in Italy, his indulgence in the
use of spirituous beverages--all this could not be otherwis