Go on and prosper. Mr. Ebsworth is a splendid fellow, evidently.
J. P. COLLIER, Esqre., has also written warmly commending the work, in private letters to the Editor, which he holds in especial honour.
“It would be a curious though perhaps an unprofitable speculation, how far the ‘Conservative reaction’ has been reflected in our literature.... Reprints are an important part of modern literature, and in them there is a perceptible relaxation of severity. Their interest is no longer mainly philological. Of late, the Restoration has been the favourite period for revival. Its dramatists are marching down upon us from Edinburgh, and the invasion is seconded by a royalist movement in Lincolnshire. A Boston publisher has begun a series of drolleries—intended, not for the general public, but for those students who can afford to pay handsomely for their predilection for the byways of letters.
“The Introduction is delightful reading, with quaint fancies here and there, as in the ‘imagined limbo of unfinished books.’ ... There is truth and pathos in his excuses for the royalist versifiers who ‘snatched hastily, recklessly, at such pleasures as came within their reach, heedless of price or consequences.’ We may not admit that they were ‘outcasts without degradation,’ but we can hardly help allowing that ‘there is a manhood visible in their failures, a generosity in their profusion and unrest. They are not stainless, but they affect no concealment of faults. Our heart goes to the losing side, even when the loss has been in great part deserved.’ ... The fact is, that in his contemplation of the follies and vices of ‘that very distant time’ he loses all apprehension of their grosser elements, and retains only an appreciation of their wit, their elegance, and their vivacity. Without offence be it said, in Lancelot’s phrase, ‘he does something smack, something grow to; he has a kind of taste,’—and so have we too, as we read him. These trite and ticklish themes he touches with so charming a liberality that his generous allowance is contagious. We feel in thoroughly honest company, and are ready to be heartily charitable along with him. For his is no unworthy tolerance of vice, still less any desire to polish its hardness into such factitious brilliancy as glistens in Grammont. It is a manly pity for human weakness, and an unwillingness to see, much less to pry into, human depravity. ‘It would have been a joy for us to know that these songs were wholly speck must go hungry through many an orchard, even unobjectionable; but he who waits to eat of fruit without past the apples of the Hesperides.’ ... The little book is well worth the attention of any one desirous to have a bird’s-eye view of the Restoration ‘Society.’ Its scope is far wider than its title would indicate. The ‘Drolleries’ include not only the rollicking rouse of the staggering blades who ‘love their humour well, boys,’ the burlesque of the Olympian revels in ‘Hunting the Hare,’ the wild vagary of Tom of Bedlam, and the gibes of the Benedicks of that day against the holy estate, but lays of a delicate and airy beauty, a dirge or two of exquisite pathos, homely ditties awaking patriotic memories of the Armada and the Low Country wars, and ‘loyal cantons’ sung to the praise and glory of King Charles. The ‘late and true story of a furious scold’ might have enriched the budget of Autolycus, and Feste would have found here a store of ‘love-songs,’ and a few ‘songs of good life.’ The collection is of course highly miscellaneous. After the stately measure may come a jig with homely ‘duck and nod,’ or even a dissonant strain from the ‘riot and ill-managed merriment’ of Comus,