in the character of Queen Elizabeth, was invested by her with such
emphatic grace and dignity as to call up murmurs of approbation [87]
which swelled into thunders of applause. Her noble head is here
engraved after Kneller, like the head of a magnificent visionary man.

Should we really care for the greatest actors of the past could we have
them before us? Should we find them too different from our accent of
thought, of feeling, of speech, in a thousand minute particulars which
are of the essence of all three? Dr. Doran's long and interesting
records of the triumphs of Garrick, and other less familiar, but in
their day hardly less astonishing, players, do not relieve one of the
doubt. Garrick himself, as sometimes happens with people who have been
the subject of much anecdote and other conversation, here as elsewhere,
bears no very distinct figure. One hardly sees the wood for the trees.
On the other hand, the account of Betterton, "perhaps the greatest of
English actors," is delightfully fresh. That intimate friend of
Dryden, Tillatson, Pope, who executed a copy of the actor's portrait by
Kneller which is still extant, was worthy of their friendship; his
career brings out the best elements in stage life. The stage in these
volumes presents itself indeed not merely [88] as a mirror of life, but
as an illustration of the utmost intensity of life, in the fortunes and
characters of the players. Ups and downs, generosity, dark fates, the
most delicate goodness, have nowhere been more prominent than in the
private existence of those devoted to the public mimicry of men and
women. Contact with the stage, almost throughout its history, presents
itself as a kind of touchstone, to bring out the bizarrerie, the
theatrical tricks and contrasts, of the actual world.

27th June 1888

VI. WORDSWORTH

The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. With an
Introduction by John Morley. Macmillans.

The Recluse. By William Wordsworth. Macmillans.

Selections from Wordsworth. By William Knight and other Members of the
Wordsworth Society. With Preface and Notes. Kegan Paul.

[91] THE appearance, so close to each other, of Professor Knight's
careful and elaborately annotated Selections from William Wordsworth,
of Messrs. Macmillan's collected edition of the poet's works, with the
first book of The Recluse, now published for the first time, and of an
excellent introductory essay by Mr. John Morley, forms