. " 1. Ditto.
" 2. Ditto.
Act V. Scene 1. Shakspeare
" 2. Fletcher.
" 3. Ditto.
" 4. Ditto.
Prologue and Epilogue, Ditto.

So far all is clear, and in this apportionment Mr. Urban's correspondent
and myself are agreed. My conviction here is as complete as it is of my
own identity. But beyond, at present, all is dark; I cannot understand
the arrangement; and I doubt if my friend, who has treated the question
with so much ability, is altogether satisfied with his own explanation.

In the meanwhile, I would suggest one or two points for consideration.
In those parts which I have set down as Shakspeare's, and in which this
writer imagines he occasionally detects "a third hand," does the metre
differ materially from that of Shakspeare's early plays?

It will be observed that, in Act iii., Scene 2., there are _two_
farewells, the second being a kind of amplification of the first; both,
however, being in the part which I ascribe to Fletcher. Is it not
probable that these were written at different periods? And supposing
Fletcher to have improved his part, might there not originally have been
a stronger analogy than now appears between this play and the _Two Noble
Kinsmen_?

The more it is tested the brighter shines out the character of
Shakspeare. The flatteries of James and Elizabeth may now go packing
together. The following four lines which I have met with in no other
edition of Shakspeare than Mr. Collier's, are worth any one of his plays
for their personal value; they show how he could evade a compliment with
the enunciation of a general truth that yet could be taken as a
compliment by the person for whom it was intended:

_Shakspeare on the King._

"Crowns have their compass; length of days their date;
Triumphs, their tomb; felicity her fate;
Of nought but earth can earth make us partaker,
But knowledge makes a king most like his Maker."

Samuel Hickson.

August 12. 1850.

* * * * *

MINOR QUERIES.

_The Abbe Strickland._--In the third volume of the _Castlereagh
Correspondence_, an Abbe Strickland figures as a negotiator between the
English Catholics and the court of Rome. His name is also mentioned
unfavourably in the "_Quarterly_" review of that work. Will some of your
readers direct me where further information can be had of him, and his
ultimate destination?

J.W.H. {199}

_Aerostation, Works