those which, on Mr. Collier's hypothesis, were withdrawn, and in fact that part of the play was written in or before 1598, and part seven or eight years afterwards.

Mr. Collier, however, supports his opinion of the double writing of this play by the authority of Coleridge and Tieck. Far from me to disparage the critical powers of Mr. Coleridge; but in his remarks on the chronological order of these plays, and indeed in anything of his connected with the history of them, there is so much uncertainty and inconsistency in the posthumous publications of his remarks, either from his manuscripts or from the recollections of those who attended his lectures, that the mind is left in doubt whether he had any settled determinate opinions on the subject at all. Yet if we allow that there are marks of two different periods of composition, this would be very far from proving that it had once appeared with the title of Love Labours Won, and was then brought out some years after as All's Well that Ends Well. As to the ingenious foreigner whose name Mr. Collier has introduced into this argument, every person will rejoice to see the minds of the ingenious and the learned of other nations turned to the elucidation of the literature of this country, but it is hardly just to them to interpose them as authorities in controverted questions concerning such peculiar writings as these, when they arise among critics at home.

A person who has paid attention to this department of literary history will have learned to pay little regard to authority, and as little to opinion, even though names really great follow. He must be content to feel his own insignificance while he seeks out the truth amidst the slight, obscure, and imperfect hints which are all that can be found to throw any light on the subject of his investigations. The whole

subject of the chronological order is still open, and I doubt not that juster views than those now taken on some of the points will open upon future inquirers, as fresh facts are brought to light, with which facts already known may be collated, and thence other conclusions be drawn. But if here authority and opinion are to be made to lead to the determination of a question that is really of considerable importance, if anything is of importance in respect of the history of the composition of these plays, let us look for a moment to the conclusions at which the two great critics in respect of the chronological order arrived respecting the date of this play. Mr. Malone and Mr. Chalmers are of course the two critics intended.

When Mr. Malone first published his essay on the chronological order, he adopted Dr. Farmer's suggestion that the All's Well is the play named as Shakespeare's by Meres in 1598, and he placed it under that year. He gave no kind of reason for doing so, but left the fact just as Dr. Farmer had left it: perplexing the subject, however, by introducing a conjecture that this play is one performed at court in 1613 under the name of A Bad Beginning makes a Good Ending, and then adding some remarks on divers titles being given to the same play. But Mr. Malone, with the true spirit of a a man who was devoted to literature, and who meant only to give what appeared to him the right view of the subject on which he wrote, and knowing that he could afford to acknowledge himself in a mistake, afterwards acknowledged that he came to the conclusion unadvisedly, for that this was a later play than he had previously supposed; and he assigns it to the year 1606. I do not enter into his reasons for fixing upon that year, nor should I wholly assent to them. What is meant now is only to shew that, if authority

or opinion is to be regarded in questions of this nature, we have Mr. Malone determining that this play could not be the Love Labours Won of Meres.

Mr. Chalmers also decides against the play having existed so early as 1598, which is in effect to say that it cannot be the Love Labours Won. See Supplementary Apology, p. 376. His date is 1599.

I should now leave the subject, believing that the reader has already heard enough of Love Labours Won, except that I must not pass by Mr. Knight's elaborate Introduction to this play in the Pictorial Edition, in which he controverts my argument, but on grounds very different from those of Mr. Collier. Mr. Collier has recourse to the supposition that the play was written in some other manner in or before 1598, and then produced with the title Love Labours Won: afterwards new scenes are introduced in 1605 or 1606, when the title is changed, and the passages inwoven in which there is an allusion to the new title. Mr. Knight, on the other hand, is of opinion that the play as we have it originally appeared with a double title, Love Labours Won; or All's Well that Ends Well, by which the title in Meres, and the allusions in the play to the proverb used for its title are reconciled. He also endeavours to shew that the meaning of the title Love Labours Won suits the action of the All's Well, the love labours being the efforts of Helena to attain her object of union with Bertram. My theory is that there is not, nor ever was, any reason for supposing that this play is the Love Labours Won, that the Love Labours Won is another play, and that the All's Well was written some time after 1598, but that at present the precise date of it cannot be ascertained. I should be inclined to refer it to 1599 or 1600, that being the time when Shakespeare appears to have been most in the humour for attacking the Puritans.

A character enters towards the close of this play who is called a gentle astringer. Perhaps a word or two more than the commentators have given us is necessary for the just apprehension of the kind of person intended. No doubt an astringer is a person who has the care of hawks; but gentle does not, I conceive, here mean, as Steevens represents it, either a gentleman, or an astringer who was of gentle condition or gentle manners, but an astringer having the care of the species of hawk called gentles, the "tiercel gentle" of Romeo and Juliet.

A custom connected with the dramatic art is alluded to in the third scene of the fourth act: " he hath led the drum before the English tragedians." Of the practice of itinerant performers giving notice of their arrival in a country town by beat of drum, we have an instance in the annals of the town of Doncaster, where, in 1684, the actors' drum going round the town, a party of military then stationed there took offence at it, and a serious riot was the consequence.

I had intended to rescue Shakespeare from the imputation of having written the nonsense which we find in the following passage in Mr. Collier's edition; and in the Variorum:

DIANA.

Alas, poor lady!

'Tis a hard bondage, to become the wife

Of a detesting lord.

WIDOW. I write good creature: wheresoe'er she is,

Her heart weighs sadly.-Act iii. Sc. 5.

but I find myself anticipated by Mr. Dyce. It is quite clear that Shakespeare wrote

Aye, right:-Good creature! wheresoe'er she is,

Her heart weighs sadly.

TWELFTH NIGHT, OR WHAT YOU WILL.

In May, 1828, being about to resort to London for the purpose of enjoying a fortnight's miscellaneous reading at the British Museum, I prepared myself by a selection in the catalogues of manuscripts of those which promised to afford the most of instruction and amusement: and, being at that time much intent on illustrating the writings of Shakespeare, I looked particularly for any manuscript from which it might be supposed that any ray of light might be shed upon any of them.

Amongst others in the catalogue of the Harleian portion of the library, I observed one which was thus described in the catalogue:

"5353.—A small Paper-Book of various Collections, dated 1601-3.

1 Epigrams and Devices.

2 Abstracts of Sermons, Notes from Books, &c. 3 A Diary, beginning January 1, 1601, to February 24, ditto.

4 The Diary resumed, May 1602, with many Abstracts from Sermons; also Verses and Miscellaneous Remarks; Extracts from Poems,

&c.

Who was the writer does not appear."

This is, to say the least, a very un-scholarlike description, and is something very different from that which the learned and truly admirable person who now presides over this department would have given of it. And when the manu