“The author's great forte is character-painting. This portraiture is accomplished with remarkable skill, the traits both individual and national being marked with great nicety without obtrusiveness.”—London Spectator.
“Under the modest guise of the biography of an imaginary 'Lorenzo Benoni,' we have here, in fact, the memoir of a man whose name could not be pronounced in certain parts of northern Italy without calling up tragic yet noble historical recollections.... Its merits, simply as a work of literary art, are of a very high order. The style is really beautiful—easy, sprightly, graceful, and full of the happiest and most ingenious turns of phrase and fancy.”—North British Review.
“This has been not unjustly compared to 'Gil Blas,' to which it is scarcely inferior in spirited delineations of human character, and in the variety of events which it relates. But as a description of actual occurrences illustrating the domestic and political condition of Italy, at a period fraught with interest to all classes of readers, it far transcends in importance any work of mere fiction.”—Dublin Evening Mail.
“SHAKESPEARE AS HE WROTE IT.”
THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE,
Reprinted from the newly-discovered copy of the Folio of 1632
in the possession of J. Payne Collier, containing nearly
Twenty Thousand Manuscript Corrections,
With a History of the Stage to the Time, an Introduction to each Play, a Life of the Poet, etc.