As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Perhaps an intermediate line is lost. STEVENS." "The arbitrary reading of Rowe should by no means be admitted. The words of the quartos may with some little alteration (as hues for dews, disastrous for disasters) be restored to the text. The line And prologue to the omens coming on is misplaced it should immediately follow gibber in the Roman streets. Prologue, it must be observed, is here a verb. I regulate the passage as follows: The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Have heav'n and earth together demonstrated The whole must be explained thus: Horatio enumerates the earthly, the lesser prodigies observed at Rome; and represents them as serving to prologue' or usher in the greater; i, e. those of the heavens. As stars with train of fire (comets); with hues of blood disastrous in the sun.' While tints or streaks of blood were seen in the sun, and which portended the most direful event. He then adverts to several of the like preternatural appearances in Denmark, and which he considers as progposticating ill. "No kind of chasm will now, I believe, be found in the speech; the lines, by transposition, become sufficiently connected and the expression clear. B." -In Mr. Reed's Shakspeare, Rowe's wanton alteration finds no place; but there is a blank left for a lost line, which Mr. Becket supplies by an ingenious transposition. We think his whole emendation happy. His alterations are few, but his explanations satisfactory; and he is so careless in his emendations of Shakspeare's rhythm, that we know not what Mr. Seymour would say to him. On some occasions Mr. Becket takes rather too much licence; as when he proposes to read for "whips and scorns of time," scores of weapon'd or whip-hand time; but his alteration of into Make it your cause,' all owe obedience," is the strangest application of conjectural criticism which we remember to have seen. In order to clear the ground for the exercise of his ingenuity, Mr. B. maintains that Shakspeare's text is very corrupt, an opinion in which we are disposed to agree with him and he asserts that the poet dealt more largely in obsolete French words than is generally imagined. Whatever be the origin of his obsolete words, they certainly are beyond parallel numerous, or why such a host of commentators? This commentator is, perhaps, 100 often busied in explaining Shakspeare from Chaucer, or the old French dictionaries, with both of which he seems familiar. The poetry of his contemporaries is not nearly so obsolete as Mr. Becket would make Shakspeare's. We give another instance of our author's manner of treating the bard: "And pity like a naked new-born babe, That tears shall drown the wind. "This passage according to all the printed copies appears extremely faulty. The images presented to us by pity like a new-born naked babe striding a blast; and by blowing a deed in every eye; have more of the ludicrous than the affecting in them, and should not here find place. Transposition of the lines is necessary, with a change in some of the words: and which I therefore make as follows: "And new-born pity naked like a babe, Or heaven's cherubin hoist Upon the coursers of the sightless air, Shall blow the horrid deed, with strident blast, That everichene intiers, shall drown the wind. All who are acquainted with old language, and who have attended to Shakspeare's practice of adopting foreign words, will see that I am right. Everichene [every one] was mistaken by the transcriber or printer for every eyne-cyne being formerly used for eyes. Intiers' is the French intiers, i, e. entirely as I have shown in another place where in tears occurs instead of it. 1 Macbeth speaks not of pily resembling a naked new-born babe, but of pity new-born; as something more than common; in a word, of pity of a higher nature (if the expression may be allowed to me) in allusion to the atrociousness of the fact he then is meditating. Naked' is simple, pure. Hoist for hoisted, placed. Coursers' I conceive to be clouds. He says, that true, unsophisticated pity, and the cherubim combined, shall blow, that is, publish or proclaim the horrid deed with strident blast,' i.e. with fou exclamation so loud; that [everichene,] every one, every blast, shall ['intiers,'] entirely, wholly drown the wind. B." In most of the preceding remarks on the author before us, we have found some ground for censure-though for none of a serious kind. But we have as yet noticed only a few out of sixteen hundred notes; and on that few we fixed because we saw that they y were m more, or less less censurable. In our next Number we mean to resume the subject; and then will be the time to balance accounts with the author, by bestowing on his labours the praise to which they are entitled-a praise that will be found greatly to outweigh the disapprobation which candour has now obliged us to express. [To be concluded in our next.] ART. V.-Memoirs and Confessions of CAPTAIN ASHE, Author of the Spirit of the Book," &c. &c. Himself. 3 vols. London. 1815. Written by HONESTY and common-sense are, after all, the two grand hinges on which the fair fame and success of man in civilized society must turn Had Captain Ashe possessed a moderate share of either, he would never have submitted, nor yet have had occasion to submit these Memoirs to the world. We are about to epitomize his life, the account of which is eked out to three volumes, by means of giving three or four pages of the most flimsy and common place declamation, instead of one sober narrative and we shall be happy if those readers who greedily swallow such productions as "the Spirit of the Book," "Les Loisirs de Napoleon," and others of the same description, become disgusted with such paltry and libellous performances, on seeing the principles on which they are undertaken and the materials of which they are composed. Captain Ashe states himself to be of a good family, on whose annals we fear his own name will only, like "certain tenebrificous stars, ray out darkness and obscurity." At ten years of age he was sent to school with the reputation of being an inconsistent, impudent, incorrigible boy." Being disappointed in his first attempt to pursue a military career, he was placed at Bourdeaux, with a Mr. Martin, who soon finding "that there was nothing to be made of one so idle and uncomplying," wisely transferred him to Messrs. Gaudette and Raymond of Marennes. He was received into the family of the former with unsuspecting hospitality, which he rewarded by seducing the only daughter of his host, at fifteen years of age, and wounding her brother in a duel, into which the young man rushed to avenge the dishonor of his sister, who expired the victim of remorse. Thus initiated into the mysteries of gallantry, our author returned in disgrace to Ireland, where his father refused to see him, and justly predicted that his whole life would be shameful and miserable. His brother Jonathan, whose character and conduct afford a beautiful contrast to his own, did not forsake him in this extremity; he procured him an appointment as under secretary to the board of Education, with a salary of 2501. per annum. Here, according to his own account, he displayed vast abilities though not in his proper sphere; for it had occurred to him "that any blockhead may go through the dull routine of official duties." Indeed he had other pursuits which sufficiently occupied his time. "At the board of green cloth I dined with Colonels Lenox, St. Ledger, and Freemantle. To the barracks I was often invited by the present General Hope, then an ensign in Pomeroy's 61th foot. At the billiard table I played with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Denis Bowes Daly, Vandeleur, and Sturt. In the ball-room I danced with the Allboroughs, Montgomeries, and L'ewellins; and on the circular road, I drove Nora Strat ford, and sometimes the equally fair Emily Rose." Vol. 1. p. 140. Notwithstanding all this happiness, our readers will not be surprized at the information he gives us in the very next page, that his "credit became unusually bad; equally in disrepute with Jews and Gentiles; with the tradesmen in Dublin and the black-legs on the Curragh of Kildare." Over this part of his life even he, unused to shame, begs leave to draw a veil. Persuaded by his brother to leave the country, he resolved to retire into Switzerland, to live on his Ensign's half pay, "and pursue a virtuous course of life which would sweeten the most painful moments of retrospection." His first step towards the fulfil ment of this laudable determination was, fraudulently to draw out of the hands of his father's attorney the sum of three hundred pounds; the next, to give Zurich an example of treachery and slander, by creeping into the confidence of LAVATER, and then exposing him and his system to ridicule in a work enti tled the "Physiognomical Quixote," which he sold for sixty crowns, and from that time, unfortunately for society, resolved on becoming a public writer." He then leaves Zurich and wanders among the scenes immortalized by Rousseau. Here he wished to become the St. Preux of an interesting Julia who was about to take the veil, but who, happily possessing more virtue, or being less sensible of his attractions than his vanity led him to suppose, continued firm against his solicitations and artifices, and sheltered herself against the future possibility of temptation in the convent she had chosen for her asylum. We next find Captain Ashe in the capacity of language-master in the family of Prince Frederick of Hesse, then Governor of Maestricht; and it is at this time he pretends to have picked up the materials with which he afterwards composed that contempti . ble performance," the Spirit of the Book." Here also he fell in love with a lady of the name of Angelica Brunswick Oels, who gave him leave to hope for her hand, in case he should ever obtain a majority in the army. As a preliminary step he procured a lieutenantcy in the Duke of Brunswick's regiment, but finding his valorous exploits among the Brunswickers not suffi ciently estimated, he ranged himself under English banners, was appointed on recruiting service, managed to involve himself once more in debt, and went, with only ten pounds in the world, to Portugal and from thence to Corsica, where he had the good fortune to get himself employed by Sir Frederick North, with a salary at the rate of 7001. per annum. A change of politics, however, blighting, his hopes of advancement, he returned to England and modestly endeavoured to recommend his transcendant abilities to Mr. Pitt in a flaming memorial, which was unattended to, as from its style, he acknowledges it deserved to be. In the moment of disappointment, however, he gave way to a torrent of abuse against the minister; and accepted the promise of a company in the 79th regiment or Cameronians. But he soon found that in looking for preferment through a Scotch medium he was leaning upon a broken reed to share ་་ "As to Colonel Cameron (says he) had he possessed the power of appointing to the vacancies of the whole army, he still could not have provided for the numerous hosts of friends and relations, who followed him clamouring for bread, "Colonel Cameron was not only at the head of a most extensive family, but he was the chief of the Cameron clan; a tribe more numerous than Levi's, and on the eers of the regimen to the promised land. Of the offi sons, legitimate and illegitimate, of the Colonel, and the volunteers and men there were not less than two hundred whose names were for promotion previously to mine, in his portfolio, or memorandum books. Vol. 2, p. 30. haban .beyar to bail vas tuoniew 01 2402790 10 He accordingly quits the regiment, goes on foot to Vienna, obtains a company in the Austrian service, and tells us, a good deal in the style of Captain Bobadil, what he could have done and would have done, had he not been taken prisoner by the French. He soon contrived to make his escape along with a companion whose veracity was as accommodating as his own, by professing a great esteem for the French nation, an un bounded admiration of Bonaparte, and tendering his services to fight against the enemies of France.. His military ardour, howevery cooled so rapidly on his way back to his regiment, that he suddenly resolved to return to England, where, after narrowly escaping shipwreck, he landed without either money, reputa tion, or friends. We will not follow him through the Isle of |