's all fun,--
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done.
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!

Yes, we're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,--
And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys
Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys!

* * * * *

WHITE'S SHAKSPEARE.[A]

[Footnote A: _The Works of William Shakespeare_. Edited, etc., by
RICHARD GRANT WHITE. Vols. II., III., IV., and V. Boston: Little, Brown,
& Co. 1858]

(SECOND NOTICE.)

We doubt if posterity owe a greater debt to any two men living in 1623
than to the two obscure actors who in that year published the first
folio edition of Shakspeare's plays. But for them, it is more than
likely that such of his works as had remained to that time imprinted
would have been irrecoverably lost, and among them were "Julius Caesar,"
"The Tempest," and "Macbeth." But are we to believe them when they
assert that they present to us the plays which they reprinted from
stolen and surreptitious copies "cured and perfect of their limbs," and
those which are original in their edition "absolute in their numbers as
he [Shakspeare] conceived them"? Alas, we have read too many theatrical
announcements, have been taught too often that the value of the promise
was in an inverse ratio to the generosity of the exclamation-marks, too
easily to believe that! Nay, we have seen numberless processions of
healthy kine enter our native village unheralded save by the lusty
shouts of drovers, while a wretched calf, cursed by stepdame Nature with
two heads, was brought to us in a triumphal car, avant-couriered by
a band of music as abnormal as itself, and announced as the greatest
wonder of the age. If a double allowance of vituline brains deserve such
honor, there are few commentators on Shakspeare that would have gone
afoot, and the trumpets of Messieurs Heminge and Condell call up in our
minds too many monstrous and deformed associations.

What, then, is the value of the first folio as an authority? We are
inclined to think that Mr. Collier (for obvious reasons) underrates
it, and that Mr. W