The Sun.
London, England, 1858-01-18 00:00:00

pencil of Kenny Meadows and the pen of Barry
Cornwall. Here—about a dozen years afterwards
comes forth another elaborately illustrated and an-
notated edition of "The Plays of Shakspere :" an
edition, however, in which, in addition to the
matchless text, the sole attractions, are the notes
aid the typography. The woodcuts profusely scat-
tered through the pages being ,!in truth, diametrically
the opposite of embellishments. Engravings in
truth they are for the most part se:miserably puerile
in design, so feeble in fancy, so utterly devoid of
humour, so entirely wanting- in the attributes of
either the graceful, or the grand, or the beautiful.
that we conceive the kindest thing here to
be done in their regard is to cover the artist's
name over sub silentio, and to pass his pictorial
efforts by, with—indifference. That is in one sense
the most, and in another the least, they demandat
our hands—indifference. Particularly when we
bear vividly in our recollection the exquisitely
graceful and humorous designs from the pencil of
Kenny Meadows—designs, in the truest sense of
the phrase, and surely that is grand commenda-
tion, in the truest sense of the phrase, Shakspereae.
Not so with these by—but we forget ; we gene-
rously suppress the name, elsewhere a name of emi-
uence, and pass on with a sense of relief to Mr.
Staunton's annotations. These in numerous in-
stances are manifestly the fruit of many years fami-
liarity with the text of Shakspere. They are the
ripened results of long and happy meditation. Not
sudden freaks of thought—jotted down upon the
margin (as the edition it passing through the press)
simply for the purpose of having something to say.
A considerable number of them, certainly, appear
to us superfluous. We its tentionally italicise to sis,
because we understand at the very time when we
write the words that the exception taken to these
particular notes constitutes strictly and obviously
nothing more than an individual objection. To
other readers they may not be unnecessary. There-
fore it may, perhaps, be as well to let them stand—
although precisely the same things have been said
very nearly in precisely the same way in every
other annotated edition that has preceded this one
during the last hundred years. Supposing, how-
ever, instead cf persisting in these objections upon
a matter, comparatively speaking, of little import-
ance—supposing, by way of example, we cull from
among these manifold leaves one of these more
blooming and ripened plums of annotative expla-
nation. In doing so we will deal fairly with our
reader, we will open the book haphazard. It opens
at page 181. It is in the fourth scene of the second
act of Romeo and Juliet. The nurse is talking to
Romeo about Mercutio. Nurse.—" An a' speak
anything against me, I'll take him down, an a' were
lustier than he is, and twenty such Jacks ; and if 1
cannot 111 find those that shall, scurvy knave !
am none of his flirt-gills ; I am none of his skains-
mates." Upon this last sufficiently enigmatical
sentence, what has Mr. Staunton to say for
himself by way of elucidation. Quoth he :
"The meaning of flirt-gills, is not far to seek.
It implied, like fir-gig, another term of the same
age, a wild, flirting, romping wench ; but skains-
mates has been a sore puzzle to all the commenta-
tors. Some have derived it from skein, a knife or
dagger ; others suppose it a mis-pronunciation of
kins-mates ; and Mr. Douce ventures a random
conjecture that the skains in question might be
skeins of thread, and that the Nurse meant nothing
more than sempstresses ! The difficulty after all
proves of easy solution. Th 3 word skain, I
am told by a Kentish man, was formerly a
familiar term in parts of Kent to express what
we now call a scape grace or ne'er-do-well ;
just the sort of person the worthy old
Nurse would have entertained a horror of
being considered a companion to. Even at this
day, my informant says, skain is often beard in the
Isle of Thanet, and about the adjacent coast in the
sense of a reckless dare-devil sort of fellow."
Enough : a solitary footnote, such as the foregoing,
will suffice—ex uno disce OMMS. The work
is throughout carefully edited, the annotations as
alrea fly intimated being only so far, to our mind, ill-
considered, that they appear to us occasionally too
abundant, too minute and even microscopic. In
a literary sense the edition is entitled to, and no
doubt will receive, a large amount and a high de-
gree of consideration.

Thorndale ; or, The Conflict of Opinions. By
William Smith. Blackwood and Sons.
It would be difficult to deny to this volume the
great merit of originality. We are unacquainted
with any literary production strictly comparable
to it, either considering it in regard to its design
or in reference to its treatment. Although its aim
is strictly ethical, its argument for the most part
metaphysical, its colouring scrupulously artistic
throughout, and although, beyond this, the parti-
cular mysteries it strives, upon occasion, to eluci-
date are chiefly, if not invariably, the inner mys-
teries of psychology, it bears about as slight a re-
semblance to the " Wilhelm Meister" of Goethe as
the late Shelton Mackenzie's art-novel of " Titian"
bears to the younger Disraeli's psychological ro-
mance of " Contarini Fleming." If there be any
book at all that it faintly reminds us of in tone, we
should say it was possibly Sir flumphry DAvy'e
strangely impressive phantasy, " The Last Days of
a Philosopher." The tone, indeed, is at once emi-
nently religious and eminently philosophical. And
the effect of the whole is, in truth, to sum up all in
a few words, exquisitely and profoundly pathetic.
"Thorndale" comprises within it the thought of a
lifetime. Its every syllable shows it to be the pro-
duction of a thoroughly earnest man, and that man
a Christian gentleman. It affords a wholesome cor-
rective to the mass of frivolous rubbish squandered
annually from the printing presses of the Unite,
Kingdom, in the form of one-volumed, two-vo
lumed, and three-volumed frivolities, half of them
absurdly facetious, and half mawkishly sentimental.
Mr. Smith's book is not merely written thought-
fully, but conscientiously. It is the production of
an author desirous of neither wasting his own time
nor that of his reader. And while it is undoubt-
edly, from first to last, an imaginative composition
that is, purely intellectual, it is moreover at the
same time almost. unintermittiugly fraught with en-
tertainment. The general character of the work
may be conjectured readily enough by the discern-
ing from the second heading upon the title-page—
that second heading, "The Conflict of Opinions,"
being of itself, we take it, sufficiently significant.
Yet more clearly, however, may the genius of the
narrative be recognised, even before its perusal, by
a cursory glance down the synopsis of the five books
completing the Diary of Charles Thorndale. In
those five books, penned haphazard, just as the
whim of the moment has seized him, that dying
diarist has written down upon the very in-
stant—frankly, unreservedly very thought that
has flitted across his pensive and dreamy imagina-
tion. The author, or rather, as he would
fain have us regard him, the editor and
reviser of the whole production, discovers
at Mount Posilbpo the blotted and straggling
manuscript of his deceased friend, long after that
friend has been buried away under the green lap of
the Neapolitan soil, fragrant with myrtles, and
roses, and orange blossoms—another of the mani-
fold victims of that fairest but saddest of all the
Angels of Death, Consumption 1 Thorndale, in his
diary, lays bare to us his bears—his heart of hearts.
He gives eloquent, and sometimes thrilling utter-
ance to all his doubts and aspirations. The pages
are not less plenteously sprinkled with tears than
they are minutely tesselated with printer's ink.
There is a nerve tingling .in every sentence. As
we read on, we not only think the writer's thoughts
but feel his feelings. It is thus variously in each
book in due succession—it matters not whether the
book is Thorndale elf,
omds
eCyspriilr,itthoef hero of the
DmeonidearnvCoisrtecricailaorince, the Utopian. To the book,
dedicated to the secord of the opinions of the
penultimate personage, namely Seckendorf, is ad-
mirably prefixed as a motto that thought of Vol-
taire, " Ah, croyez moi, 2,'erreur a son m6rite."
The motto selected
say the least for the
of i
hewt an
4l
is enigmatical
t
enough,hardly required
tube authenticated with the name of Wordsworth—
" Sleeps the future, like a snake enrolled,
Coil within coil."
At the conclusion of Thcrndale's Diary we have
elaborately unfolded to us, in two parts—preceded
by an introduction and supplemented by a conclu-
sion—" The Confession of Faith of an Eclectic and
Utopian Philosopher," dated A.D. 1850. The
introduction endeavours to explain "This Crea-
tion of Nature and Man" to be " A Progressive
manifestation of the Divine idea." Part One
undertakes to define " The Development of
the Individual Consciousness "—and Part TwQ4
" The Development of Society." The whole of
this somewhat daring Appendix—purporiing to be
the Confessio Fidei of Clarence—constituting, in
fact, the scheme of a New Philosophy. It is
scarcely necessary to add that, as this volume of
Thorndale hardly leaves one theme of emotional
meditation untouched, we very often find ourselves
dissenting, toto ccelo, from the views and senti-
ments herein advanced. Indeed, the second title
of the book, " The Conflict of Opinions," involves
this, perforce, as an admitted necessity. It is nct
merely the reader who dissents, but the writer him-
self likewise very frequently. Besides, the argu-
ments_e being repeatedly placed by him in the
mouths of various and conflicting interlocurtoefirsp,o/:2.
(the writer) is often, in a manner, no nisocorawatist
sable for the opinions propounded, rraoteartc. For
for those expressed by his ineosetleYA pages he is,
the aggregate moral
efbut may cheerfully
The book is elevated
ahcocwepetvetrh,atrersepsopousnleility.
lieleavvaptrinecgiainbliytsttoenaddveanneyee.
elective and discerning class of
Among the more r _
readers I
in design,
. acancli::
hardlythereforfea'
its anther' reputation.