PROGRESS OF PUBLICATION.
THE play selected for the Second Number of KNIGHT'S Pictorial Edition of Shakspere, is King John. Besides the emendatory and explanatory criticisms on particular passages, and the authorities for the costumes of the graphic illustrations, the Introduction en- deavours to maintain the theory with which the editors started, that SHAKSPERE began his dramatic career earlier than is com- monly supposed; but they are more successful in shaking the views of other conjecturers than in establishing their own. The Supple. mentary Notice opposes, and we think justly, the opinion of JOHN- SON, that Sit AKSPERE'S historical plays have no unity of action :dii the contrary, sometimes, as in Julius Civsar, the poet changes the philosophical moral in order to establish a dramatic one,—inaking the destruction of the conspirators a punishment for the death of Crosser; whereas the truth is, society was utterly corrupted, and the aim of Brutus an impossibility, not to be effected by thedeath of Crosser, his family, and Antony to boot.
The illustrations, upwards of forty in number, are perfect gems of wood-engraving.
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