aware of the increased interest that most readers of poetry had in the works of the fathers of our literature,) succeeded in persuading them to devote four volumes, out of the thirteen which comprised his collection, to re-prints of the poets who lived prior to the period at which Dr. Johnson's edition commences. They had no reason to regret their determination. Before twelve years had elapsed the booksellers of London undertook another and much more copious body of poetry: the editor had the power of inserting and rejecting, in a much greater degree than any of his predecessors; but he used his power with a most grievous lack of judgment, with an unpardonable disregard of opportunities and means, such as we fear will not again speedily fall to any individual. Many very scarce, curious, and beautiful pieces of English poetry, to which he confessedly had access, were altogether omitted. Nothing was to be found of the metrical works of Sackville, Tusser, Sir P. Sidney, Withers, Fairfax, May, Herrick, Marvell, and many more of equal desert.

Space was found, however, for every rhyme of Sackville (Duke of Dorset) Roscommon, Duke, Sprat, King, Stepney, Sheffield, Smith, Broome, Savage, Halifax, Pomfret, and many others equally splendid, original, and melodious. This was a needless perpetuation of the characteristics which dishonoured the edition of 1777.

Mr. Chalmers added many, without even the excuse which this Bibliopolio precedent afforded him-such as Wilkie, Whitehead, Lovibond, &c. &c. But not one line of the exquisite and truly poetical compositions of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea. Many years we fear must pass before the injury done by this ill-judged compilation will be removed..

We owe thanks to several contemporaries for the learning and skill with which portions of our primitive literature have been illustrated; we can make honorary mention of Southey, Singer, Park, Gifford, and their worthy fellow-labourers of an inferior rank. We wish that we could honestly and sincerely state, that the compiler now before us, merited the praise of well-directed industry... We are, however, unwillingly obliged to say, that his book is one of the most absurd and useless, either for entertainment or grave instruction, that we ever met with. The same command of libraries, and the same diligence which is here abundantly indicated, would, if applied to the formation and execution of a sound object of literary exertion, enable Mr. Schultes to produce a work that would entitle him to the respect, and obtain for him the thanks, of all those who are ambitious of becoming familiar with the thoughts. and the actions of our ancestors. Without further preamble, we must now proceed to explain the nature of these Flowers of Fancy,'

"Vide the Preface to Chalmers' Works of the English Poets, 21 vols. 8vo. 1810.'

and justify, by some quotations, the sentence we have passed upon them.

They are brought together chiefly from poetical writers, with the view of furnishing those who wish to be figurative in their style or discourse, with metaphors, and especially comparisons; which makes us think of the invention of Mr. Babbage, a distinguished mathematician, whose machine for calculating and casting up sums! was announced a few years back. There was more rationality in this scheme, than there is in Mr. Schultes' attempts at a poetical Ready Reckoner: for example, what profit or pleasure can arise to any one, from reading such detached similes as here follow in the order and in the very words of the book:

'Absurd as to strive against the stream.-Spenser.

as from men's propensity or sufferings to conclude their innocence or guilt.-South.

as to hope for constancy in the wind.-Byron.

as to seek to pacify the sea with tears.-Glapthorne.

as to endeavour to unite the contraries of spring and winter. -Dr. Johnson.

as to endeavour to quench fire with oil.—Quarles.

as to endeavour to increase the splendour of the sun by a lighted taper.-H. Blair.

as to deny that two and two make four.-South.

as to expect harvest in the dead of winter.-South. as the belief of a plain contradiction.-Tillotson. Dead as earth.-Shakspeare.

as clay.-Otway.

as a stone.-Chaucer and others.

as a door-nail.-Shakspeare, Shadwell, and others.
as a herring. Play, Landgartha.

as a stock-fish.-Otway.

as a monument.-Davenant.

A little farther on :

Deaf as death.-N. Lee and others.

to intercession as the ear of death.-E. Irving.

as the dead.-N. Lee.

as the sea.-Shakspeare.

as the stormy sea.

-Tate.

as the remorseless sea.-Corye.

as winds and seas to the sailor's prayers.-Wandesford.

to my prayers as seas and winds to sinking mariners.—Dryden. as the rocks.-J. Shirley.

as a storm.-Davenant.'

Other similes follow, with as much regard to chronology, as the above quoted; and the article Deaf,' is closed by the citation of a very sublime and novel similitude in the works of a distinguished modern playwright." Deaf as a Post."-Colman.'

We will next give specimens that have at first some promise of agreeable illustration.

'Dear as his soul's redemption.-Shakspeare.

Dearer than my soul.-Shakspeare, Machin, and others.
Dear as my soul's bliss.-T. Killigrew.

as heaven.-Play, Arden of Feversham.

as life.-G. Whetstone, Beaumont, and others.
Marston.

as air,

Dearer than air or eye-sight.-M. G. Lewis.

than the vital air I breathe.-Dryden, Hoole's Ariosto.
than life, one that fears to die.-N. Lee.

than my breath.-Beaumont and Fletcher.

than life's best joys.-A. Hill.

Dearly prized as life.-Jonson.

Dear, more dear, more precious to my heart than the warm blood which feeds its vital motion.-R. Dodsley.

as the drops that warm my heart.-H. More.

as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.-Gray, in Dodsley's Collection.'

We were tempted to stop at the fourth line of this citation, to ask Mr. Schultes whether his "Arden of Feversham" is the anonymous production which Schlegel rashly ascribes to the author of Hamlet and Macbeth; or the work avowed by Lillo, who lived a century later; but we were constrained to pause at the last, from Dodsley-More and Gray: the omission is more remarkable than the vagueness of the references. We read in a tragedy, entitled, "Julius Cæsar," by one William Shakspeare, an address from Brutus to Portia, in which these words occur:

"You are my true and honourable wife,

And dear unto me as are the ruddy drops

That visit my sad heart."

If we had formed our notions from Mr. Schultes, we might have supposed that the cited poem of Mr. Gray existed only in the collection of verses made by his bookseller, instead of forming, as it does, part of the indignant lamentation of the Bard' over his slaughtered brethren, which has so long excited the general admiration. "Dear, lost companions of my native art;

Dear as the light that visits my sad eyes;

Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying countries cries!"

It is not, we believe, usual with those who refer to any part of Dr. Johnson's acknowledged and incorporated works-to indicate "Gentleman's Magazine," and that only. We find as we proceed, that there are still greater offences chargeable on Mr. Schultes than the mere mutilation of English writers. We impute to him-the making unwarrantable and absurd additions, such as would induce the ignorant reader to think that he had the authority of the greatest of poets for comparisons they never made, and which no one ever thought (before the Flowers of Fancy' appeared), of ascribing to them. -e. g.

'Delicious as the breath of Maia on violets diffused.-Thomson.

like the sweet south, that breathes upon a bank of violets stealing and giving odour.-Shakspeare.'

Under the word 'Pleasant,' the last of these quotations, is repeated, 'Pleasant as the sweet south,' &c. &c. We hardly need tell any of our readers that neither of these epithets are to be found in Shakspeare; and we will leave them to form their own opinion of the propriety of enlarging the most delightful passage in praise of music, that was ever written, by preferring either of them.

One specimen more and we have done.

'Shake like an aspen leaf.-Lidgate, Selden, &c. like a leaf.--Coleridge.

like a reed.-Byron.

like a reed when ruffled by the storm.—J. Bird.
like a field of beaten corn.-Shakspeare.

like leaves of corn when tempests blow.-Dryden.
the air like thunder.-Sheffield.

like a felon before the bench.-Quarles.

like a spied spy.- Donne.

shake thee from me like a serpent.-Shakespeare.'

The simile from Donne is striking, and will be new to many. We can hardly say so much of those that precede it; that by which it is followed ought, if inserted at all, to have been under a distinct head. Shake, here, obviously means merely to throw away; and in all the other sentences, it signifies to agitate, or to cause to tremble.

These extracts render any further justification of our expressed opinion needless. There is also a long, and not badly written, preface, followed by a copious alphabetical list of the writers from whom the Flowers of Fancy' are plucked. There are many names with which, we will confess, we are not familiar; there are some omitted in the list from whom quotations have been made, such as H. Moore' (quære, Henry or Hannah ?) We are left to our own judgment or memory to determine the source of these citations. Are they from the rhapsodies of the Platonizing Doctor, or does the authoress of Colebs claim them as her own? find A. L. Aikin, and a few lines down, A. L. Barbauld. Need the editor be informed, that these two names belong to the same person? and that all the published compositions of the first were inIcluded in the works of the second?

We

We might mention many other instances of error and want of judgment, but we are not disposed to be wantonly and mischievously severe; and we would hope that these remarks will suffice to deter him from the publication of any similar work,* even if

At the end of the book, a Phraseological Dictionary, in a royal quarto volume, is announced.

his own experience of the present does not warn him from the fulfilment of his declared purpose.

It is with great pain to ourselves that we have made these animadversions. We are anxious for an opportunity of proving to Mr.Schultes, that we are willing to praise, when we can do it with sincerity. The many indications in his volume, of an amiable and ingenuous mind, rendered us reluctant to pass the sentence of literary condemnation upon it.

An acknowledgment is made of the liberality of various gentlemen throughout the kingdom, who have promoted his views by permitting him to examine their collections of scarce dramatic works,' especially the noble proprietor of the Charlemont Library, in Dublin, who, with a liberality of mind characteristical of his country, afforded the compiler the utmost accommodation to enable him to accomplish the object of his researches.'

There are many works (which we presume are included in these collections) of which we have either no modern editions, or very unworthy ones. We therefore think that Mr. Schultes would judiciously avail himself of the treasures open to him, if he were to use his vast reading for the purpose of bringing (wherever obscurity exists) similar passages into juxta-position; if he would humble himself to imitate the example of Ayscough, Twiss, Todd, and others, who have made very useful verbal indices; or, to put another choice, if he were to do something towards supplying the deficiencies of all our yet existing glossaries. Dr. Nares has done much, but has left more to be done. The lexicographical part of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, is admirable in plan and execution, but years must elapse before it is completed, and we are not aware that it occupies the attention of more than one individual, who must have super-human faculties, if he succeeds in tracing the earliest use, together with every variety of use, of every English word, since ours has been a written language.

ART. IV. Nouveaux Fragmens Philosophiques, pour servir à l'Histoire de la Philosophie Ancienne. Par Victor Cousin. Paris: 1829. IN every age and country distinguished for the cultivation of literature, grave and solid writers have been observed to complain of the silly and preposterous predilections of their contemporaries, and to regret those good old times in which they suppose philosophy was in vogue. Plato lamented that the taste for profound meditation and abstruse reasoning, had nearly vanished in his time; and from those days to our own, the cry has ever been the same. The fact seems to be, that the greater number have always been actuated by a more powerful appetite for enjoyment than for knowledge; and, therefore, those authors whose sole object is to agitate the passions, and by a more or less skilful imitation of life,