Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

ENGL. LIB. FD.

LONDON:

F. PICKTON, PRINTER, PERRY'S PLACE, 29, OXFORD STREET.

TO HIS READERS AND REVIEWERS.

By the Scotch Review, which bears the outward semblance of Buchanan, we have been reviled as a "Caviller" and a "Smith." The editor might have reflected that our names and lineaments we inherit, whilst our words and actions are our own. If his pages were as full of wisdom as ours are free from cavil, the visage without his book, would not be regarded as a mask, whose brains we vainly seek within: and the Review might yet hope to attain a fame coextensive with our name-a name which some wise, and many worthy men, have borne--which, though not unique, is perfectly genteel-and which has, of late years, become such a tower of strength that, for it, a King of the French was glad to forego his own high-sounding title.

In our little pamphlet (a letter to Lord Ellesmere), it is written-" I purposely abstain from any attempt to compare the writings of the author I am about to mention, with the Plays which are attributed to Shakespeare; not merely because that is a labour too vast to enter upon now, but more particularly because it is essentially the province of the literary student."

We did not, and do not, pretend to be equal to a literary labour. We merely, to use an expression of Bacon's, "have taken upon us to ring a bell, to call other wits together, which is the meanest office." But as, like unready servants, they stared at the bell instead of answering it, we are compelled to do our own errand, and reluctantly make some further entrance into the subject.

« ZurückWeiter »