THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK. By Mr. MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH, author of The Yellowplush Correspondence.' In one volume. pp. 160. BERFORD AND COMPANY, Astor House.

We can always promise to any one who opens a volume of THACKERAY's, abundant food for entertainment. He overflows with whimsical humor; his wit is sometimes inimitable; he sees with a true eye, and depicts with the faithful pencil of a painter; his is a natural, easy, and graceful style; without any trick to excite attention, but only a jotting down of thoughts, fanciful, sad or funny,' as they shall comen into his minde.' Parts of Yellowplush' are so dramatic and exciting, that laugh as we may at the ridiculous orthography of CHAWLS,' we cannot avoid being wonderfully interested by the movement of the story. The Journey from Cornhill to Cairo,' as we have heretofore shown, is replete with graphic descriptions; and the reader who can follow our author in his eventful narrative of a journey through the highways and by-ways of the Green Isle, without being interested, and occasionally laughing consumedly,' has not so much in common with us as we could fain wish he had, for his own sake. We have space but for one scene, where a stockingless Irish girl, 'PEG of Limavaddy,' evoked the aid of his Muse. He has been riding from Coleraine to Derry, shivering sad, and weary of soul :'

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MOUNTAINS stretch'd around,
Gloomy was their tinting,
And the horse's hoofs
Made a dismal clinting:
Wind upon the heath

Howling was and piping,
On the heath and bog,

Black with many a snipe in: 'Mid the bogs of black,

Silver pools were flashing, Crows upon their sides

Picking were and splashing. Cockney on the car

Closer folds his plaidy
Grumbling at the road
Leads to Limavaddy.

Through the crashing woods
Autumn brawl'd and bluster'd,
Tossing round about

Leaves the hue of mustard;
Youder lay Lough Foyle,
Which a storm was whipping,
Covering with mist

Lake, and shores, and shipUp and down the hill

[ping,

(Nothing could be bolder,) Horse went with a raw,

Bleeding on his shoulder.

Where are horses changed?'
Said I to the laddy
Driving on the box:
'Sir, at Limavaddy.'

Limavaddy's inn's

But a humble bait-house, Where you may procure Whiskey and potatoes; Landlord at the door

Gives a smiling welcome To the shivering wights

Who to his hotel come. Landlady within

Sits and knits a stocking, With a wary foot

Baby's cradle rocking.

To the chimney nook,
Having found admittance,
There I watch a pup
Playing with two kittens;
(Playing round the fire,
Which of blazing turf is,
Roaring to the pot
Which bubbles with the mur-
And the cradled babe [phies :)

Fond the mother nursed it,

Singing it a song

As she twists the worsted!

Up and down the stair

Two more young ones patter,
(Twins were never seen
Dirtier nor fatter ;)
Both have mottled legs,

Both have snubby noses,
Both have-Here the host
Kindly interposes:
'Sure you must be froze

With the sleet and hail, Sir,
So will you have some punch,
Or will you have some ale,
[Sir ?'

Presently a maid

Enters with the liquor,
(Half a pint of ale

Frothing in a beaker)
Gods! I didn't know

What my beating heart meant,
HEBE's self I thought

Entered the apartment.
As she came she smiled,

And the smile bewitching,
On my word and honor

Lighted all the kitchen!

With a curtsey neat

Greeting the new comer,
Lovely, smiling Peg

Offers me the rummer;
But my trembling hand
Up the beaker tilted,

It should perhaps be explained, that there is an illustration in the book (and a great many other good ones besides, from the hand of the author,) of the fair' PEG of Limavaddy.' Mr. TITMARSH draws equally well with pencil and pen.

SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS: WITH HIS LIFE. Illustrated with many hundred Wood-cuts; executed by H. W. HEWET, after designs by KENNY, MEADOWS, HARVEY, and others. Edited by GULIAN C. VERPLANCK, LL. D. With critical Introductions, Notes, etc., Original and Selected. In three volumes. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

We promised in our last number to present a more elaborate notice of this truly noble work than we were then enabled to do, and we now proceed to the fulfilment of our pledge. The last number of the London Quarterly Review observes: After all the assistance that SHAKSPEARE had derived from his commentators, it was yet undeniable that much remained to be done and to be undone. An edition was wanted which, preserving what was good in the old editors, and rejecting what was worthless, should reflect the knowledge and feeling of the present day. Mr. KNIGHT and Mr. COLLIER have contended for the honor of supplying the deficiency, and have still, it must be confessed, left the field open for a third competitor. The labors of both these gentlemen are useful and commendable; but it is not likely nor desirable that either one editor or the other should long remain a standard editor of SHAKSPEARE.' It may be justly claimed for the studiously collated and admirably prepared edition before us, that it satisfactorily supplies the desideratum hinted at by the Quarterly Review. The first and greatest labor of the Shaksperian editor, as Mr. VERPLANCK Well observes, arises from the various readings of the poet's text, and the alterations, conjectures and controversies of critics concerning them; differences which spring from a variety of editions, obvious errors of the press, the tastes of different editors, or rather of the age in which they lived, etc. The text of the present edition, carefully and accurately printed, is copied from the late edition of COLLIER, minutely perused, and given with only such variations as a full examination of the evidence as to the right reading suggested. In choosing among the varying readings, the editor has departed as little as possible from the older text; so that many of the alterations introduced by STEVENS and MALONE have been rejected, with as little hesitation as many of them had been previously omitted by KNIGHT and COLLIER. The alterations, however, which were unquestionably made by SHAKSPEARE himself, in the revision and enlargement of several of his plays, have been carefully retained. These, when matters of interest or curiosity, are detailed in notes, with a brief summary of the reasons adduced in support of them.

The notes of exposition and interpretation in the edition under notice give the substance of all the annotations, valuable either for the elucidation of obscurely-expressed thoughts, of obsolete words and phrases, or of antiquated allusions. The editor has incorporated with the mere verbal and antiquarian commentary the sub

The plan of the English pastoral was always much the same, and the theme invariably love. Shepherds lying by the sides of rivers, playing on oaten pipes, or singing in courtly strains, the praises of their mistresses, lamenting or rejoicing, according as hope or despair prevailed; beautiful nymphs, bathing in limpid waters, or reclining under verdant trees; crooks garlanded with flowers, streams standing still to sympathize with human sorrow, skies ever pure and radiant, smiling with perpetual summer; these were the themes, forced and unnatural, cold and heartless, which for so long a time occupied the places which true feeling, genuine passion, and lofty sentiment ought to have held.

Gay alone, of all the poets of that period, seems to have had a proper idea of what an English pastoral ought to be. His characters are real rustics; and his 'Shepherd's Week,' though originally written to ridicule the pastorals of a contemporary, is still prized for its correct though somewhat coarse pictures of low country life. He tells us himself, in his address to the reader, that we will not find his shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking the kine; or, if the hogs are astray, driving them to their styes. My shepherd,' he continues, gathereth no nosegays but what are the growth of our own fields; he sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge; nor doth he vigilantly defend his flock from wolves, because there are none." His picture of the country-ballad singer is, we think, excellent. Bowzybeus, a tipsy ballad-singer, who, we are told,

is found asleep by a troop of country lads and lasses, laughing and romping, as lads and lasses wont to do. With much noise and merriment they call on him to awake and give them a song. One frolicsome damsel steps forward, and

kisses with smacking lips the snoring lout;

another tickles his nose with a straw; and after a while, he awakes, and sings them a succession of songs, well calculated to please such tastes as theirs. The conclusion of this scene is admirably hit off.

'His carols ceased; the listening maids and swains
Seem still to hear some imperfect strains.

Sudden he rose, and as he reels along,

Swears kisses sweet should well reward his song.

The damsels laughing fly: the giddy clown

Again upon a wheat-sheaf sinks adown;

The power that guards the drunk his sleep attends,
Till ruddy, like his face, the sun descends.'

Very different from this, however, were the Pastorals of Gay's contemporaries.

Pope wrote four, descriptive of the four seasons. And certainly, when we consider them as the work of a boy of sixteen, we are bound to admire them; but we cannot help exclaiming: Pity he did not choose a better theme.'. In the first Pastoral, two shepherds, Daphnis and Strephon, after leading out their flocks on Windsor's

blissful plain,' sit down to compete with each other who shall sing the best song in praise of his mistress, the one staking a lamb, the other a bowl of delicate workmanship; and Damon, another shepherd, is appointed umpire. Strephon then commences thus :

'INSPIRE me, PHOEBUS! in my DELIA's praise,

With WALLER's strains, or GRANVILLE'S moving lays!

A milk-white bull shall at your altars stand,

Which threats a fight, and spurns the rising sand.'

The idea of an English peasant offering a sacrifice to Apollo, is too ludicrous. Daphnis answers in the same strain, and the contest continues for some time; till at last Damon exclaims:

'CEASE to contend; for, DAPHNIS, I decree

The bowl to STREPHON, and the lamb to thee.
Blest swains, whose nymphs in every grace excel!
Blest nymphs, whose swains those graces sing so well!'

In Pastoral II., Alexis, 'a shepherd boy,' is heard lamenting the pangs of hopeless love. From the similarity of the name, as well as from the first line of the poem, we suspect the boy-poet himself is here shadowed forth. It begins thus:

'A SHEPHERD's boy, he seeks no better name,
Led forth his flocks along the silver Thame,
Where dancing sunbeams on the waters played
And verdant alders formed a quivering shade.
Soft as he mourned the streams forgot to flow

There! that's enough! that's quite sufficient ! 'Soft as he mourned, the streams forgot to flow!'

Lord Lyttleton, the courtly and accomplished Lord Lyttleton, wrote a Pastoral Poem, in four Eclogues, entitled 'The Progress of Love.' It is (it must be owned) a fine poem, and contains some beautiful descriptions;* but it differs nothing in character from those already described, and is disfigured by similar incongruities. The hero thus describes his first meeting with the object of his affection:

'WHERE yonder lines conspire to form a shade,
These eyes first gazed upon the charming maid;
There she appeared, on that auspicious day,

When swains their sportive rites to BACCHUS pay.'

This would lead us to think that the scene lay in Thessaly or Arcadia, in ancient times; but on the next page Damon makes her a present of a Canary-bird, and the illusion is at once dispelled.

Shenstone was an English country gentleman, and as such, enjoyed opportunities of observing rural life which were denied to

*For instance:

'ON a romantic mountain's airy head

(While browzing goats at ease around him fed,)
Anxious he lay;

The vale beneath a pleasing prospect yields

Of verdant meads and cultivated fields;
Through these a river rolls its winding flood,
Adorned with various tufts of rising wood;
Here half concealed in trees a cottage stands,
A castle there the opening plain commands,
Beyond, a town of glittering spires is crowned
And distant hills the wide horizon bound.'

the poets of the court and the city. Yet he does not seem to have improved them; for his Pastoral Poetry differs from that of the rest, only in its being chiefly written in the elegiac strain, and in his being himself the hero of his story,' his Delias, Celias, etc., etc., being his own mistresses, real or imagined.

It is marked by the same affected sensibility, the same artificial view of nature, the same vapid and uninteresting tameness. With all this, however, Shenstone is a delightful poet, and never failed to please when he chose to array his thoughts in the chaste language of genuine feeling, as in his Village School-mistress,' and his exquisite 'Ode on Rural Elegance.' Nothing can exceed the graceful beauty and unaffected elegance of the latter, from which, though foreign to our subject, we are tempted to make a short extract:

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'SEARCH but the garden, or the wood,

Let yon admired carnation own

Not all was made for raiment, or for food,

Not all for needful use alone;

There, while the seeds of future blossoms dwell,

"T is colored for the sight, perfumed to please the smell.

Why knows the nightingale to sing?

Why flows the pine's nectareous juice?

Why shines with paint the linnet's wing?

For sustenance aloue? for use?

For preservation? Every sphere

Shall make fair pleasure's rightful claim appear.

And sure there seem, of human-kind,

Some born to shun the solemn strife;

Some for amusive tasks designed,

To soothe the certain ills of life;

Grace its lone vales with many a budding rose,

New founts of bliss disclose,

Call forth refreshing shades, and decorate repose.'

Is not that beautiful, and just, and true? Instances might be multiplied to show the absurdity of the pastoral style, but

'What should you need of more?

Yea, or so many? What need one?'

But there was another species of pastoral poetry, which we must by no means pass over-namely, pastoral songs; the composition, not of real poets, but of that crowd of poetasters who always follow in their wake, and imitate their style, whatever it may be. O! the surpassing insipidity, the inexpressible inanity of those songs, which the fair ladies of the times of George the First and his successor were wont to trill forth, to the accompaniment of the jingling spinet or twanging arch-lute. Here is a fair specimen :

'SAY, have you seen my ARABEL,

The Caledonian maid?

Or heard the youths of Scotia tell
Where ARABEL is strayed?

The damsel is of angel mien,

With sad and downcast eyes;

The shepherds call her Sorrow's Queen,
So pensively she sighis.'

Another of these dulcet ditties treats of a shepherd who retired to a lone vale, and there 'sung his loves, evening and morn:'

HE sung with so sweet and enchanting a sound,
That sylvans and fairies unseen danced around.'