"Whose station's built on avees and applause."
Vol. III. pp. 47-48:—
"And then rest, gentle bones; yet pray
That when by the precise you are view'd,
A supersedeas be not sued
To remove you to a place more airy,
That in your stead they may keep chary
Stockfish or seacoal, for the abuses
Of sacrilege have turned graves to viler uses."
To the last verse Mr. Hazlitt appends this note, "Than that of burning men's bones for fuel." There is no allusion here to burning men's bones, but simply to the desecration of graveyards by building warehouses upon them, in digging the foundations for which the bones would be thrown out. The allusion is, perhaps, to the "Churchyard of the Holy Trinity";—see Stow's Survey, ed. 1603, p. 126. Elsewhere in the same play, Webster alludes bitterly to "begging church-land."
Vol. I. p. 73, "And if he walk through the street, he ducks at the penthouses, like an ancient that dares not flourish at the oathtaking of the praetor for fear of the signposts." Mr. Hazlitt's note is, "Ancient was a standard or flag; also an ensign, of which Skinner says it is a corruption. What the meaning of the simile is the present editor cannot suggest." We confess we find no difficulty. The meaning plainly is, that he ducks for fear of hitting the penthouses, as an ensign on the Lord Mayor's day dares not flourish his standard for fear of hitting the signposts. We suggest the query, whether ancient, in this sense, be not a corruption of the Italian word anziano.
Want of space compels us to leave many other passages, which we had marked for comment, unnoticed. We are surprised that Mr. Hazlitt, (see his Introduction to "Vittoria Coromboma,") in undertaking to give us some information concerning the Dukedom and Castle of Bracciano, should uniformly spell it Brachiano. Shakspeare's Petruchio might have put him on his guard. We should be glad also to know in what part of Italy he places Malfi.
Mr. Hazlitt's General Introduction supplies us with no new information, but this was hardly to be expected where Mr. Dyce had already gone over the field. We wish that he had been able to give us better means of distinguishing the three almost contemporary John Websters one from the other, for we think the internal evidence is enough to show that all the plays attributed to the author of the "Duchess" and "Vittoria" could not have been written by the same author. On the whole, he has given us a very respectable, and certainly a very pretty, edition of an eminent poet.
In leaving the subject, we cannot but express our satisfaction in comparing with these examples of English editorship the four volumes of Ballads recently published by Mr. Child. They are an honor to American scholarship and fidelity. Taste, learning, and modesty, the three graces of editorship, seem to have presided over the whole work. We hope soon, also, to be able to chronicle another creditable achievement in Mr. White's Shakspeare, which we look for with great interest.
History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time. By WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Third Edition, with Additions. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1858. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 566, 648.
We are heartily glad to welcome this reprint of the "History of the Inductive Sciences," from an improved edition. From an intimate acquaintance with the first edition, we should cordially recommend these volumes to those who wish to take a general survey of this department of human learning. The various subjects are, for the most part, treated in a manner intelligible and agreeable to the unlearned reader. As an authority, Whewell is generally trustworthy, and as a critic usually fair. But in a work going over so much ground it would be unreasonable to expect perfect accuracy, and uniformly just estimates of the labors of all scientific men. Dr. Whewell's scientific philosophy naturally affects his ability as an historian and critic. In his Bridgewater Treatise, he indulged in a fling at mathematics, for which we have never wholly forgiven him; and in the present volume we see repeated evidence of his underestimate of the value of the sciences of Space and Time. He says, Vol. I. p. 600, that it was an "erroneous assumption" in Plato to hold mathematical truths as "Realities more real than the Phenomena." But to us it seems impossible to understand any work of Nature aright, except by taking this view of Plato. The study of natural science is deserving of the contempt which Samuel Johnson bestowed upon it, if it be not a study of the thoughts of the Divine Mind. And as phenomena are subject to laws of space and time as their essential condition, they are primarily a revelation of the mathematical thoughts of the Creator. Those mathematical ideas are, in Erigena's phrase, the created creators of all that can appear.