put together, and it is professedly merely "written up" to supply the letterpress for a series of engravings. The fact that all the female characters of the comedies of Shakespeare are only illustrated by quotations, would seem to indicate either that the author's or publisher's original intention was to confine the text to such citations, or that the former, becoming weary of his task, finished the work with this lame and impotent conclusion. In several chapters the lady character serves as a mere peg whereon to hang some brilliant garment of an essay, behind which she is quite concealed, and in many cases the citations from the comedies are far from being apt or well chosen. That carelessness prevailed is shown in the fact that none of the numerous quotations in the tragedies are given in the German original, with references to act or scene—an omission which has been a cause of annoyance to many a reader— while several of these references in the comedies are incorrectly numbered.
On the other hand, it may be fairly said that, making every allowance for every error of commission or omission, there is probably no small work of the kind in any language which is so well worth reading. The tribute to the genius of Shakespeare, whom the author sincerely believed to be immeasurably the greatest genius in the world, as contrasted to his narrow-
