State Trials : Specimen of a New Edition, by NICHOLAS
THIRNING MOILE, Esq. This volume has disappointed us. On its announcement we looked for what is really wanted—a selec- tion of state trials, the most remarkable for the light they throw upon the manners of the age, the practice of the law, or the constitutional history of the country. Such a collection, illus- trated by notes, and prefaced by introductions, blending the spirit of history, biography, and legal antiquities pleasantly to- gether, would be instructive, attractive, and curious. Instesd of it, Mr. Moue has versified three state triale—Aeret AYLIFFE for heresy, Sir WILLIAM STANLEY fir high treason, and MARY Queen of Scots. In other words, the writer has fettered himself, as a poet, by the leading forms of legal procedure, but lost the plain and dramatic story of the event which a trial brings out, as well as its minute and characteristic touches both of the times and persons, and gained nothing in their stead; for except the sudden appearance of Clifford at the council to de- nounce Stanley's treason, these poems consist of little save speechifying, and a description of processions. The author has thrown away the individual truth of' records, without gaining the higher truth of art.
But though disappointed, we must do justice, and say that Mr. llotee's diction is forcible and poetical, his versification always sustained and often vigorous. He has failed chiefly through the mistaken choice of a subject ; in which he has been compelled to substitute words for narrative, action, and character ; and this mistake is the more to be regretted, as some of his curious and valuable notes show him capable of rendering legal questions attractive,
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