Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/124

ii2 REVIEWS. By far the most interesting of the annotations, however, are those in Harvey's copy of Speght's 'Chaucer' (1598), the book which belonged to Bishop Percy, was seen by Malone and Steevens, and was then supposed to have perished in a fire at Northumberland House. Prof. Moore Smith, however, happily, just before the publication of his book, found it in the possession of Bishop Percy's great-grand- daughter, and in an Appendix he has printed Harvey's notes, and he has included as well a collotype facsimile of the most interesting pages, where a reference to the popularity of Shakespeare's 'Venus and Adonis,' 'Lucrece' and 'Hamlet' with various classes of readers is immediately followed by a list of contemporary poets, including Spenser, Constable, Daniel and Shakespeare, who are char- acterised as ' our florishing metricians.' If, as would appear likely, this note was written before Spenser's death in January, 1599, it follows that the usually accepted date for the first per- formance of 'Hamlet' (1602) must be at least four years too late. A study of Harvey, prefixed by Prof. Moore Smith (pp. 4-76), sums up the main facts about his career, his character and his ambitions in the light of the new knowledge gained by the ' Marginalia,' and adds to the value of a book which will be welcomed by all students of Elizabethan literature. C. S.