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England fathers in Israel, for substance, scope, and aim, the best
hitherto published. The chief matter must in all cases be the text, and
the faults we find in him do not, as a general rule, affect that. Some
of them are faults which his own better judgment, we think, will lead
him to avoid in his forthcoming volumes; and in regard to some, he will
probably honestly disagree with us as to their being faults at all. No
conceivable edition of Shakspeare would satisfy all tastes;--sometimes
we have attached associations to received readings which make impartial
perception impossible; sometimes we have imparted our own meaning to
a passage by too steady pondering over it, just as in twilight an
inanimate thing will seem to move, if we look at it long, though the
wavering be truly in our own overstrained vision; sometimes our personal
temperament will insensibly warp our judgment;--but Mr. White has
generally shown so just a discrimination, that there are few instances
where we dissent, and in these a pencil will enable every one to edit
for himself. Any criticism of an edition of Shakspeare must necessarily
concern itself with seemingly insignificant matters, often with a
comma or a syllable,--and the danger is always of degenerating into a
captiousness and word-catching unworthy the lover of truth for its own
sake. We shall endeavor to be minute without being small.

Mr. White reserves for a first volume (not yet published) his notices
of Shakspeare's life, his remarks upon the text, and other general
introductory topics. In the second volume, he gives us an excellent copy
of the Droeshout portrait, the preliminary matter of the Folio of 1628,
with notices of the writers of commendatory verses thereto prefixed, and
of the principal actors who performed parts in Shakspeare's plays. We
notice particularly his discussion of the authorship of the verses
signed J.M.S. as a good example of the delicacy and acuteness of his
criticism. Though he has the great authority of Coleridge against him,
we think that he has constructed a very ingenious, strong, and even
convincing argument against the Milton theory. Each play is preceded
by an Introduction, remarkably well digested and condensed, giving an
account of the text, and of the sources from which Shakspeare helped
himself to plots or incidents. We cannot but commend highly the
self-restraint which marks these brief and pithy prefaces, and the
pertinency of every sentence to t