minded hatred of the English, is in the highest degree interesting and piquant. Not less able are his accounts of the development of the influence of Shakespeare in Germany and France, while the vivacity of expression, the brilliancy of tone and colour, and the accurate though miraculously rapid sketching of outline of the tragical characters, or of others connected with them, is not surpassed, if it be equalled, by any writer of this century. If it be a test of the original merit or character of men or books that we can remember something of them, this work should rank among the best, since few who read it will ever forget its valuable information, or the brilliant style in which it is conveyed—apples of gold on plates of silver.
These apples are not all, however, of purest gold, and I have, I trust judiciously, pointed out in notes what I believed to be the admixtures of baser metal. It is so much the habit of translators, like biographers, to swallow their subjects whole "without winking," and to exalt them as perfect in every conceivable respect, that the idea of pointing out or admitting errors in mine will seem to many to be simply an unpleasant paradox. This will certainly be the case with those who read merely for pastime, and who dislike anything which calls for thought or disturbs the even current of their waking dream,
