were gathered up, strung, and clasped with gold: and imitating Hamlet's sentiment, ("The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty—use them after your own honour and dignity") Watson, Braithwaite, Constable, and Breton, were tricked out in splendid attire, befitting Jonson, or Chapman, or Marlowe, or Sidney, which so far from concealing their native meanness, set it forth in tenfold insignificance.
The rage for blindly reprinting works, merely because they were rare, is quenched; but it has had its use in creating a general spirit of investigation of the fine old writers of England, and Italy, which is gaining ground daily: and the effect of such search is visible in every department of literature[1]. "The Retrospective Review," as far as it has appeared, is a considerable improvement on former publications of a similar nature; but in its poetic department, it pro-
- ↑ Yet even at this time there are men of indurated, unpoetical minds, to whom the simple, majestic, weighty style of our noble translation of the Bible is "uncouth, vulgar," and who clamour for an entire new version!!
