general, and which nevertheless, for their own peculiar character or for the influence they have exerted on periods of our history, deserve to be made known. To describe these, to cull from forgotten books the beauties or the useful facts which are worthy of preservation, to restore forgotten knowledge, as well as to give our readers bibliographical notices of old books, is the particular object of our RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW, and we trust that we shall be enabled, by encouragement from the public, to carry out our design continually more effectively through each succeeding volume. We will only add that, on our own part, it will be our study to carry out that design fully and effectually. London. Oct. 1853. Percy's (Bishop) Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. 1794. National Characteristics in the Sixteenth Century Borde's (Andrew) Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge. 1542. Extracts from the Diary of John Richards, Esq., of Warmwell, in Dorsetshire, 1697-1702. 97, 201, 408 Religious Fragment in Anglo-Saxon, with a Translation. 206, 420 The Order of Shoting with the Crosbow; a Poem of the Sixteenth Century. 206 Poem, supposed to be in the Lancashire Dialect of the Fourteenth Century. 307, 419 THE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW. ART. I. Mrs. Behn's Dramatic Writings. Plays written by the late ingenious Mrs. BEHN. In four volumes. The third edition. London: Printed for Mary Poulson, and sold by A. Bettesworth, in Paternoster Row, and F. Clay, Without Temple Bar. M. DCC. XXIV. THE HE literature of the Past has for us a varied interest, which increases in its bearings as it becomes more remote from our own times. Beauty of composition, intelligence, and sentiment, are qualities which depend upon circumstances that are not altogether regulated by the ordinary course of historical events, and they appear at times as individual cases of unusual development, or as more general developments produced at periods by unusual encouragement or excitement. The great mass of the literature of the past is forgotten, because it contained either none of these qualities, or to so small an amount in proportion to its bulk, that it will not repay the general reader the labour of seeking for them. But there are other points of view in which this literature has a more general interest, which increases according to its antiquity, or, perhaps we may say, according to its rarity. Our knowledge of social condition and social manners, by tradition, goes back but a short distance, and no contemporary chroniclers have drawn up, or indeed could have drawn up, pictures of society which would have satisfied our inquiries. It would have required a mind more comprehensive than that which was enough to mark down the mere historical or political events of the day. These at once struck every one; but the features of social condition and social progress were too familiar to the mind of contemporaries to excite that attention which would lead the annalist to record them. It is only by closely studying the popular literature of the time, which deals in what were then familiar and trivial objects, that we can gain a knowledge of that which thus passed unheeded by the chronicler. This popular literature varies in character at different periods, 1.-1. 1 and naturally becomes less abundant the farther we go back. In the middle ages it consists chiefly of popular poetry, and of stories. Even then, in the religious mysteries and miracle plays, it was found necessary to humour so far the taste of the vulgar, as to introduce humorous scenes from popular life; and the few examples of these scenes which are preserved are amongst the most valuable illustrations of contemporary manners. They were, in fact, the first rude attempts at Comedy in the modern acceptation of the term. After the Reformation, these religious plays were succeeded by the regular drama. This was itself at first a mere representation, on the stage, of historical subjects; and even the comedies were but similar representations of the old medieval novelettes, selected from writers like Boccaccio, with no intention of depicting contemporary manners; although, as was the case with the older religious plays, when the dramatist attempted to paint domestic scenes, or popular manners at all, he was compelled of necessity to copy what he saw going on around him. This was the casc even with Shakespeare. Gradually, however, the practice became more and more prevalent, of taking the whole plot of the play from contemporary events, or contemporary manners, making it in fact a newspaper or a satire; for the idea of bringing contemporary history on the stage does not belong exclusively to modern times. Comedy, employed to caricature contemporary manners and vices, took a great extension under our first James and Charles, and was revived in all its force after the restoration. In the earlier part of the reign of Charles the Second, the popular taste appears to have had a leaning towards tragedy, but this did not last long; and the number of comedies printed, between the restoration and the end of the seventeenth century, was very great. Many of them are full of talent, admirable in plot, and sparkling with wit; but the very circumstance which makes them most interesting to the historian has caused them to be forgotten. They represent manners and sentiments which people no longer understand, and books which need a commentary can never be really popular. Morcover, the dramatic writings of the latter half of the seventeenth century labour under another difficulty; they partake, in an extraordinary degree, in the looseness of that proverbially loose age, and they are calculated only to shock the delicacy of the present day. It is principally with a view to their interest, as making us acquainted with the manners and sentiments of the age to which |