The Sun.
London, England, 1847-07-12 00:00:00

bie
grophical notice of saint Francis of Assisi
are those in which are described, first, the
tg)r_owth of the Franciscan order by the accumulation
.f.! the disciples around the founder—those being
•!.',larnard de Quintavalle, Peter of Catania, Egidius,
abbatini, Morico, John de Capella, Sylvester, and
others of less importaLce ; secondly, the formation
!f the confederacy near the river Torto ; thirdly,
the supplication of Francisco to Pope Innocent
on the terrace of the Vatican ; fourthly, his preaching in
the sacred consistory before Pope Hon orius 111. ; fifthly,
his daring attempt, in the Holylands, to go unarmed
amongst, the Saracens, and to convert the Soldan to
the air ; and lastly, his death in the monastery, of St.
Mary of Angels, after eating the cakes of Jacoba.
Thet final picture is simply but exquisitely pencilled.
:His last labour done, he was laid, in obedience to
i.us own command, on the bare ground. The even-
ing, we are told, was calm, balmy, and peaceful, the
Western sky glowing with the mild and transparent
radiance which follows the setting of an autumnal sun
behind the lofty hills of central Italy. At that moment
the requiem for the dying ceased, as the faltering
►oice of Francis was heard, in the language of David,
exclaiming, Voce med ad Dominum clamavi !"
Again we would express our satisfaction at discerning
the Honourable George Percy Sydney Smythe among
the number of the Edinburgh reviewers, for the more
closely we examine this leading article on " Saint
firincis" the more thoroughly are we convinced that
'4 is the effusion of his scholarly and elequent pen. A
rich promise of the revival of the olden glory of the
Edinburgh is afforded by the acquisition of a contributor
so opulent in literary promise himself. The second
article is an admirable paper on Beaumont and
-..tletcher, opening with a miniature memoir of Francis
Ileaumont, who was born in 1585, at Gracedieu, hard
by Charnwood Forest, and died in 1616 ; and another
of John Fletcher, who was burn in 1579, at Rye, and
died of the plague in 1625 at London. Knowing
these dates, it will be well to remember one or two
others of
peculiar interest—namely, that Beaumont
Bas younger than Fletcher by somewhere about
years; that they first met in 1607; that, reckon-
ing from 1607, their union as friends and poets con-
tinued during nine or ten years ; and that Fletcher
survived his companion nine summers. Fletcher was
Puor, and wrote for his bread ; Beaumont was well-
t'clu, and wrote from a pure love of the art; hence,
argues the reviewer, their literary association
with each other " must have been entirely free,"
and not have arisen from the hack partner-
Ship in the composition of dram as caused by the
exigencies of a playhouse. An interesting anecdote
about Shakspere (only recently brought to light) is
given in this criticism. We eagerly transfer it to
our columns as we would anything new and
authentic about that God-like Genius. Edward
Alleyn, be it premised, and William Shakspere are
" the two great theatrical managers"—the managers
of the two great rival theatres of London—mentioned
below.

" Alleyn being absent in the country on a strolling
excursion, at a time when the theatres in London were
shut by reason of the plague, his wife receives in town
a visit from ' a pretty youth, and handsome in apparel,'
who assumes an aristocratic name, asks for a loan of ten
Pounds, and asserts that he is known both to Mr. Alleyn
and to the other great theatrical manager. Mrs. Alleyn
who, as the step-daughter of old Philip Henslowe, had
learned economy and caution, declines to comply with
the demand till the reference shall have been verified;
and the brother manager, on being appealed to, declares
that he knew the applicant only by having heard that he
Was a rogue, and is glad the treiney had not been given.
The impostor does not aeain show himself; and Joan
Alleyn, in her next letter to her hu.band, exultingly
tells him the story. Her friendly adviser eves a per: on
hiellehondluZ. are accustomed to think as discharging
to humanity than detuoing swindlers. She
describes him
ahial
as
'Mr. Shakspere of the Globe.'"
Speaking of the visible influence exercised
over his contemporaries, and his immediate succes-
sors, by the dramas of Shakspere, the reviewer
writes as follows :
If" imaginative inventors, of all ranks below the very
ighest, are like planetary satellites, which revolve in-
deed each on its own axis, but are all carried round in
the orbit of their common centre; nay, to push the coin-
Parison a step further, Jupiter himself, as well as his
moons,
gravitates in dependence on the sun. Through
the concurrence of the two impulses, the special and the
common, it is natural and inevitable, that the appear-
!nee of every great work or groups of works, in litera-
ture or art, should not only produce particular and
d,,ersigned imitation, but should throw over all productions
)71 the same class a hue which otherwise they would not
ave possessed. Thus did thoughts, and feelings, and
highway
innumerable, sown by Shakspere beside the
• stately plants,
on which he travelled, spring up there into
plants, and shed their seeds over every field that
lay in the neighbourhood. Even the spirit of the great
Poet did in some degree rest upon his contemporaries,
!hen his wide mantle fell and covered them all—his
rivinest moods of emotion, his most dazzling trances of
areagioation his profoundest intuitions of character, his
marvelousreaches of thought, sounding all the depths
of human nature;—these were indeed inspirations not
!ouchsafed to any but himself, and apprehended but
imperfectly even by the most exquisitely endowed of
thoset to whom the poetic seer communicated his visions.
u
there was much that could be both comprehended
transfused; much that did as
s from the most com-
prehensive of all created minds, to to the finest of the
intelligences which surrounded and followed him. The
magnetic rapport between his genius and that of his
fellow dramatists, could not, it is true, qualify any of
them, even in their most intense phases of poetical
rapture, to imagine characters, or mental histories, like
those of
Hamlet, of Othello and lago, of Lear, or of
Macbeth: but the relation was close enough to enable
several of them to conceive forms and incidents, feelings
anal, thoughts not so very dissimilar to those of Romeo
Nothing.
Juliet, of As You Like It, of Much Ado about
--".49. That Samuel Johnson should prefer Shak-
reree comedies to his tragedies, does not surprise us.
ut that Milton should have gone to see a comedy of
Sheatspere's when he was merry, and have been oblieed
to fall back upon Greek plays about Pelops' line' when
he was sad—not finding in Shakspere enough of pity
ithoughthe showed
_good taste in doing so, is more than
Wepi. can understand. '
The estimate of the different plays of Beaumont and
strain
is generally judicious, and is penned in a
'rain of encomium not one iota more than is de-
-"
id• A glimpse at a " Whaling Cruise" is suc-
a-eci by an elaborate criticism upon Lord Sidmouth
tin„d 11;s, .biographer, the Dean of Norwich. " Robin
that
wurenisowa
ned delightful scrap of antiquarian gossip upon
outlaw, all except the concluding
party renowned
where, to our indignation, his existence
at any time is altogether discredited ! Robin Hood
!I.IYI his time-honoured companions, George-a-Green,
.iylot.d.d Marian, Friar Tuck, Scarlet Much, and Little
flit across the pages as vividly as though they
were in the greenwood glades, but they are invested
bution awful authority as mythes. The other contri-
miscell
santeleouths e Edinburgh Review are clever and
, Tancred, treatof Prussian Agrarian L er. Ben
islatiojamin
Eastlake 'sgn,
02 the travels of Mrs. Quillinan and Mrs. Butler, of
Materials for the History of Oil Painting,
and of the important problem " What is to be done
with our Criminals ?" Abetter number of this eminent
Periodical has not appeared during- ni.,nv past quarters.

MAGAZINES—t tjk/iN i INUED.)
TIDE COMIC lIISTORY OF ENGLAND
No. xrir. By Gilbert- Abbott A'Beckett.
The reigns of the bloody tyrant, Henry VIII, and
of his equally bloody daughter, Mary, who, on
coming to the throne, was, says our author, " com-
paratively old, exceedingly hard, and totally void of
all the milk of human kindness," are the subjects out
of which our author has contrived to find food for
laughter in the present number. As a specimen of the
manner in which he has executed his task, we take the
admirable description of the death and character of
Henry VIII.:
" The tyrant, who had been getting physically as well
as morally worse and worse, clung to life with such des-
perate tenacity. that is a sure sign of there being good
reason for dreading death in those among
whom, after a
certain age, such a cowardly fear is manifest.youloutlive
would
d all the
often impiously threaten that " be %
Younger people about him yet ;" and though his time
Was evidently not far off, he would not bear to be told
of his true condition. Instead of repenting of. his past
life, he devoted the wretched remnant of his existence to
doing all the mischief that he coull, and venting his
Malice to the fullest extent that his now failing strength
Would admit of. Nobody dared muster resolution to tell
the unhappy old brute that he must very speedily die,
until Sir Anthony Denny, a knight who shared our
friend Drummond's aversion to any humbug of any de-
scription, boldly told old Harry that he was on the point
of visiting his redoubtable namesake.
" Finding all chance of escape cut off, he began con-
fessing his sins ; but it was rather too late, for, had his
repentance been sincere, the catalogue of his crimes was
far too voluminous to allow of his getting through one
half of it before his dissolution. He had been in the
habit of adjourning that court of conscience existing in
his as well as in every man's breast, and he always post-
Poned it sine die; but when the time to die actually
came, or the die was really cast, it was rather late to
Move for a new trial. Henry died on the 29th January,
1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, the thirty-eighth
of his reign, and at least the forty-first of his selfishness,
basen(s;, and brutality.
" He had been married six times, having divorced two
PS his wives, beheaded two more, and left one a widow.
This leaves one more—Jane Seymour—still unaccounted
for tad indeed her death was the most wonderful of
all, tircause it was natural. lie left behind him three
Children but he did not care a pin's head, or even—to
name a- article of smaller importance to him—a wife's
bead, for any one of them. Such a ye; y bad man was
sure to be a very bad father, and he hart declared two
'32f his children illegitimate, for it was the delight of this
monster to depreciate his own offspring in the eyes of
the world as much as possible. His religious reforms,
however wholesome in their results, were brutal in their
peention and base in their origin. His insincerity may
be gathered from the fact that he appointed masses to
bee said for his own soul, though he had burnt many
persons for popery ; and he seemed to think that, by
ng up two creeds at once on his death-bed, ho could
ire e up for the utter irreligion of his past existence.
paid to have coutributod Cv the nue of Wight-