3 DECEMBER 1864, Page 20

CURRENT LITERATURE.

The Plays of William Shakespeare. Carefully edited by Thomas Keightley. Six volumes. (Bell and Daldy.)—The editor is, we think, fairly entitled. to claim the merit of having done his work carefully. The emendations are very few, and care on the editor's part has a tendency to diminish them, for they are generally unnecessary even when they are most happy, and emendations are then speculative Improvements, not corrections of the text. The volumes themselves are first-rate specimens of what our publishers can do. The paper is excellent, the type beautifully clear, and the printing most accurate. Nothing, too, can be neater than the cloth binding, and the page is just the right size for reading. If the volumes had been more numerous, so as to be a little less thick and so lighter to hold in the hand, it would. have been an improvement, but it would of course have added con- siderably to the cost. All things considered, the edition could hardly have been improved.