[32] Fitzwater: son of water. A striking instance of the compatibility of the serious pun with the expression of the profoundest sorrows. Grief, as well as joy, finds ease in thus playing with a word. Old John of Gaunt in Shakspeare thus descants on his name: “Gaunt, and gaunt indeed;” to a long string of conceits, which no one has ever yet felt as ridiculous. The poet Wither thus, in a mournful review of the declining estate of his family, says with deepest nature:—
The very name of Wither shows decay.
[33] Also cruelly slain by the poisoning John.
[34] i. e. of peace; which this monstrous act of John’s in this play comes to counteract, in the same way as the discovered Death of Prince Arthur is like to break the composition of the King with his Barons in Shakspeare’s Play.
[35] The Dauphin of France, whom they had called in, as in Shakspeare’s Play.
Literature.
Glances at New Books on my Table.
“Constable’s Miscellany of original and selected Publications” is proposed to consist of various works on important and popular subjects, with the view of supplying certain chasms in the existing stock of useful knowledge; and each author or subject is to be kept separate, so as to enable purchasers to acquire all the numbers, or volumes, of each book, distinct from the others. The undertaking commenced in the first week of the new year, 1827, with the first number of Captain Basil Hall’s voyage to Loo-Choo, and the complete volume of that work was published at the same time.