Essays from Shakspere. By G. Somers Bellamy. (Simpkin and Marshall.)—We
have no doubt that the author of these essays is an
ardent admirer and a diligent student of Shakespeare. But it was hardly necessary for him to have made the great poet a peg on which to hang what seem to us, for the most part, rather common-place reflections. Some really good remarks occur, but then they are by no means original. It strikes us as somewhat superfluous to give us in one of his essays statistics about the evil effects of drunkenness, and to tell us the number of public-houses (" public hells," as he calls them) respectively in Lancashire and in London. We wonder, too, what good warrant he has for saying that there are "few lessons as to goodness, morals, wisdom, that Shakespeare taught, that he did not illustrate in his own conduct." This, surely, is a pure conjecture. Nor can we see much point in the remark that Shakespeare desired "to show his Creator that in him the imago of the Godhead was no blurred negative." Indeed, we are not sure that we understand it ; and as it seems to us, in other passages our author strains after far-fetched phrases, and becomes decidedly obscure.
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