338 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



the sprite addresses himself particularly to the sex ; and, fresh from 

 such pleasant experience, he returns joyfully to the court of King 

 Oberon with the following resolution to the queen's enigma and to 

 our ideas, as the " simple-minded monarch" himself observed, te he 

 needed not have travelled far or long for it." 



" Be she young, or he she old, 

 Warpt, or formed in beauty's mould ; 

 Be she widow, wife, or maid, 

 By whatever temper swayed, 

 Woman's master-passion still 

 Is to have her soverign will." 



The author very judiciously dedicates his work to Mr. Alderman 

 Now, therein evincing a very shrewd and discriminating judgment, 

 it being but just to shew what consideration we can to those whose 

 present favour we solicit ; but we think he might have spoken in 

 terms of less acerbity of " PRINCE POSTERITY," at whose hands we 

 are bold to say he is not likely to receive any ill turn, seeing the 

 small probability of their ever becoming acquainted ; these three 

 volumes, pleasant and refreshing though they are, will travel but a 

 short distance on the road to cultivate so remote a connexion. 



Our author further says, that the tales, " whether good, or bad, or 

 only indifferent, it will hardly be denied they are original." Now 

 that is not altogether so clear to us. The fairy world, with its king 

 and queen, was already made to his hand his hero is Shakspeare's 

 own. He has given no new attribute to the " tiny people" has 

 painted them with no new colouring. Their potations of honey-dew, 

 and lodgings in cowslip bells, have been pictured by other travellers ; 

 indeed, their " language, manners, and customs," and their " domes- 

 tic regulations," have been given us from the " very best authorities." 

 The author has not added to our stock of knowledge on those interest- 

 ing subjects. The plot of his work is a fac-simile of the Peri in 

 " Lalla Rookh," and the enigma to be propounded is as " old as the 

 hills." We have heard it scores of times in the nursery, and that is 

 many years ago. Having therein the materials found to his hands, 

 it is not such a tax upon the imagination of so talented a writer as 

 Mr. George Soane, to produce from them three volumes of sufficient 

 interest, independently of the questionable claim to originality. 

 That other writers have not preceded him in the path which he has 

 chosen, might perhaps have proceeded from diffidency from a want of 

 cofindence in their own powers to follow so closely in the footsteps of so 

 mighty a master in one of his most beautiful excursions a weakness, 

 which, fortunately for us, our author is free from but certainly from 

 no want of knowledge of the capabilities of the subject. 



We make these remarks with no spirit of detraction from the merits 

 of Mr. Soane's work, or in contradiction to our already expressed 

 opinion ; we sincerely congratulate the author on his boldness and 

 his talent, and are delighted to bear testimeny to the success with 

 which he has wrought this very pleasant fiction. 



