Library at Göttingen 360,000. The Imperial Library of St Petersburg stands next after that of the British Museum, (the Paris Library standing first), and contains about 580,000 volumes. Into the histories of these great collections we have no space to enter. It may, however, be safely affirmed that, though some of them approach our national collection in magnitude, the British Museum Library far surpasses the noblest of them, in the all-important qualities of universality, proportion and accessibility.

The second main division of Mr Edwards' work, treating of the "Economy of Libraries," does not contain much that is of a nature to interest our readers, nor does it, indeed, contain so much practical information of a technical kind as we might have expected from the author's long experience as assistant in the Library of the British Museum, and, subsequently, Librarian of the Manchester Free Library. We think that the hundred and ten pages which Mr Edwards has devoted in the first part of this work, to the printing of the catalogue of an old monastic establishment at Canterbury, might have been infinitely more usefully occupied with a catalogue of a model modern library of reference and general information of from seven to ten thousand volumes. This, if well-executed, would have been of great service to those who are, or may be engaged in the formation of those town libraries, the prosperity of which, Mr Edwards seems to have so much at heart. We know, however, few tasks which would require so much judgment, and such well-arranged stores of knowledge as this; and, perhaps, Mr Edwards thought it better not to attempt an undertaking so difficult and responsible. The catalogue just published by Mr Winter Jones, moreover, supplies the desideratum in point, and Mr Edwards may probably have known of the approaching publication of this most important contribution to the "Economy of Libraries." We cannot but think that the tabular "schemes" of universal knowledge which Mr Edwards has given in this second part of his work, may prove very dangerous temptations to Librarians of an over methodical turn of mind. A theoretically perfect representation of knowledge in all its departments, as far as the number of volumes would admit, would be as bad a selection as could well be made for the purposes of a small public library. We know of no safe guide in this matter, but the experience of many years of what books are most asked for by the greatest number of serious students. It is this experience which has dictated the selection of works contained in the catalogue compiled by Mr Rye, and edited by Mr Winter Jones-the assistantkeeper and keeper of the Library of the British Museum, To a certain extent, however, the town libraries which are now

in process of formation, ought to pursue paths of their own. Mr Edwards most justly urges the propriety of forming, in such libraries, "special collections on local topography." "This," he says, "should be one of the first departments to receive attention in the formation of new libraries for the public. Everything that is procurable, whether printed or MS., that bears on the history and antiquities, the fauna and flora, the trade and politics, the worthies and notabilities, and, generally, on the local affairs of whatever kind of the parish, town, and county in which this library may be placed, and of the adjacent district, should be carefully collected. Wherever unprinted materials of this sort are known to exist in other libraries, whether public or private, transcripts should be obtained. If the town or district have any great staple trade, every book and pamphlet relating to that trade generally as well as locally-should be procured, as opportunity may offer. It will also be of advantage to collect the productions of local printers on whatever subject, however trivial, especially if the town or city have been the seat of an early press." Mr Edwards omits to warn small public libraries of the kind in point, against the danger of receiving miscellaneous donations, without careful discrimination. People generally give away books of little value. To become public benefactors by the presentation of batches of books which are incumbrances to ourselves, is charming, but let librarians beware how they commit themselves, and their successors, to the keepership of bulky trash which will, some day or other, inevitably stand in the way of the extension of the collection in the right directions. Another danger to this kind of library is that the persons charged with the purchase of books may seek at the same time to purchase a little transitory popularity by making the permanent public collection more or less a substitute for the book club and circulating library. Let it be carefully borne in mind, that, although 20,000 is a large number of volumes for a library of standard literature, it is nothing for a library that ventures to indulge in the general and almost wholly ephemeral literature of a period in which Great Britain, France, and Germany alone issue that number of new books every year.

We conclude our notice of Mr Edwards' work, with the repetition of our opinion that, although it contains a good deal which might have been omitted without loss, and omits some things which ought to have had a place in it, the book will prove a serviceable one to a select but increasing class of persons. It is evidently the result of a large amount of labour and experience, and it would give us pleasure to hear that its reception had been equal to its merits.

ART. IX.-New Exegesis of Shakespeare: Interpretation of his Principal Characters and Plays on the Principle of Races. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. 1859.

"QUIDQUID est optimum, ante non fuerat," is the pertinent motto on the title-page of this work. We cannot deny the author's claim to originality; but whether or no he has fallen upon a principle of criticism universally applicable to the Shakespearian dramas, is a question of a more difficult kind. He has, however, set the reasons for his faith in the "New Exegesis" so fully before us, in the handsome volume now on our table, that critics will have full scope for dealing with them on the merits. Apart altogether from the value or the worthlessness of the theory so ably and earnestly stated and illustrated in this work, we accept it as another testimony added to those which each generation since Shakespeare's day has given to his transcendent genius. "There Shakespeare! on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world. Oh eyes sublime, With tears and laughter for all time.”*

One of

There is no end to the theories of the commentators. them finds that his dramas were constructed on the plan of exhibiting the struggle of christian moral precepts with the moral code of the unchristian world. Another is sure that he must have had a political meaning in view in all his writings, and that he designed to help forward the cause of manhood suffrage, triennial parliaments, and vote by ballot. One makes it as clear as noonday that the bard had been bred a lawyer, and all who believe this hasten to deduce a complete system of jurisprudence from the plays. Another advocates the admission of Shakespeare into the household as the guide in all home training, and backs his reasons with the plea, that he had made out from one passage and another, that he was "a converted man." A fifth, resolving not to be outdone by any who had gone before, finds in the poet's fruitful pages a system of physiology abreast of those set forth by Carpenter, Sharpey, and Professor Bennett. A sixth, in dipping into "Troilus and Cressida," and being of a misanthropic turn, is enamoured with the expression,

"For men, like butterflies,

Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,"

and he sets about to find (he succeeds of course) that Shakespeare was an entomologist, who could measure shoulders with

* Mrs Browning's "Vision of Poets."

Burmeister, Stainton, and Westwood. The poet must have had this species of commentator in his eye when he wrote

"I'll use you for my mirth; yea, for my laughter,

When you are waspish!"

A seventh-but no, we must bring our catalogue of species to a close. There would be no end. All science, all philosophy, all theology, may as surely be found in Shakespeare, as the late Archdeacon Williams found them in perfection in his revered "Homerus." This whole class of commentators try patience not a little. One is apt to be seduced from habitual good-nature into Caliban-like surliness, and to cry

"All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you."

We have lost count of the commentators, and have thus no numeral by which to distinguish the author of the New Exegesis. We will, however, do our best to expound his views to our readers.

One, or, we may say, the leading thought in this volume is, that the great dramatist, while neglecting the classic unities, "must have had a unity in his own genius, and have stamped it on his own writings by a necessity no less organic."-P. 8. That is, if we apprehend the author's meaning, Shakespeare had one exampler in his own mind, after which the whole expression of his genius was to be formed. Acted upon by the forces at work in the world, and consciously influenced by these, he resolved to give them full expression. The knowledge, then, of these forces, will supply the key to all his dramas. All the politics, the religion, and the art of the world were being influenced by the peculiarities of the different races-the Roman, the Teutonic, the Celtic, and the Hebrew-and Shakespeare, having attained to the understanding of this, takes it as the basis for his philosophy. Races are marked, to use a modern phrase, with an individuality as clearly and as well defined as is that of every one of their members. For purely psychological purposes, the value of this thought will be acknowledged. If we can point to the influence of race, as illustrated in the mental peculiarities of different nations, and more than all, if we can trace the similarity of mental characteristics, in whatever country and amidst whatever circumstances the same race is found, we have undoubtedly means within our reach for forming a somewhat correct estimate of their philosophy, at all points at which it may seem to differ from the philosophy of any other people. Just as the geologist, after having determined the general paleontology of any one formation or series of strata, has the key to this, though parts of it may occur thousands of miles away from the spot where he

first met with it, and under colours which would lead a superficial observer to set down the rock as entirely different chemically. Thus far may we go with the author of the New Exegesis, without identifying ourselves with his classification of races. But it is not held that Shakespeare followed this ethnological guide rigidly and without deviation. He saw the countless cross currents on the great sea of life, and acknowledged them in all his endeavours to picture human nature in his dramas. This he did by choosing a centre figure as the type of a race, and by grouping around him a motley crowd, each one of whom he made a channel for giving expression to all those divergencies from the type which mark the weaker members of the race when they meet with forces collateral to that central one. The central figure triumphs over these, and continues true to his national features, be the influences what they may; whereas the subordinate characters have their idiosyncracies modified by the circumstances surrounding them. Shylock remains every inch a Jew; the good-for-nothing Jessica would have yielded to Bhuddist influences as readily as to Christian. But this fact, as we shall see, does not go to strengthen the new theory.

Now, setting personal sympathies aside, if there be any truth in this view of Shakespeare's method, we must admire its wisdom. The influence of the distinctive psychological features of a people over their morality is well known. Thus, up to a certain point, we can trace this and observe an existing harmony. But when the well-marked mental peculiarities of another people meet these, and when divine, superhuman, forces strike against them, and lie influentially alongside of them, we will at once acknowledge that only the very highest genius could hope to deal with all these in such a way as to give us a true picture. These were precisely the circumstances in which our great dramatist stood, when he surveyed the weltering sea of life around him. He found "all the world a stage," on which the men and women were living earnestly for some purpose. A few were doing what they did as unto One above them; but the great crowd, then as now, were living, to use the words of Jean Paul, as if "God were dead.” And it was not a pure Teutonic race on which his great soul looked forth, sorrowfully enough, but on Saxon and Celt, Jew and Gipsy, and on varieties of all these as the fruits of intermarriage. A tangled web this, even for ethnologists who carry bundles of hypotheses about with them, in readiness for the cutand-dry solution of all difficulties! And if tangled to such, is it likely that any other class among mortals would seek to unravel the mystery? If our author, then, can make out his point satisfactorily, who will not be ready to welcome him as the clearer up of all Shakespearian difficulties? He will have shown, too,