LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS* 237 



To remove you to a place more airy, 

 That in your stead they may keep chary 

 Stockfish or seacoal, for the abuses 

 Of sacrilege have turned graves to viler uses, 



To the last verse Mr. Hazlitt appends this note, Than that of 

 burning men s bones for fuel. 5 There is no allusion here to 

 burning men s bones, but simply to the desecration of grave 

 yards by building warehouses upon them, in digging the 

 foundations for which the bones would be thrown out. The 

 allusion is, perhaps, to the Churchyard of the Holy Trinity; 

 see Stow s Survey, ed. 1603, p. 126. Elsewhere, in the same 

 play, Webster alludes bitterly to begging church-land. 



Vol. i. p. 73, And if he walk through the street, he ducks at 

 the penthouses, like an ancient that dares not flourish at the 

 oathtaking of the praetor for fear of the signposts. Mr. Haz- 

 litt s note is, Ancient was a standard or flag; also an ensign, of 

 which Skinner says it is a corruption. What the meaning of 

 the simile is the present editor cannot suggest. We confess we 

 find no difficulty. The meaning plainly is, that he ducks for 

 fear of hitting the penthouses, as an ensign on the Lord Mayor s 

 day dares not flourish his standard for fear of hitting the sign 

 posts. We suggest the query, whether ancient, in this sense, be 

 not a corruption of the Italian word anziano. 



Want of space compels us to leave many other passages, 

 which we had marked for comment, unnoticed. We are sur 

 prised that Mr. Hazlitt (see his Introduction to Vittoria 

 Corombona ), in undertaking to give us some information con 

 cerning the Dukedom and Castle of Bracciano, should uniformly 

 spell it Brachiano. Shakspeare s Petruchio might have put 

 him on his guard. We should be glad also to know in what 

 part of Italy he places Malfi. 



Mr. Hazlitt s General Introduction supplies us with no new 

 information, but this was hardly to be expected where Mr. Dyce 

 had already gone over the field. We wish that he had been able 

 to give us better means of distinguishing the three almost con 

 temporary John Websters one from the other, for we think the 

 internal evidence is enough to show that all the plays attributed 

 to the author of the Duchess and Vittoria could not have 

 been written by the same person. On the whole, he has given 

 us a very respectable, and certainly a very pretty, edition of an 

 eminent poet. 



We could almost forgive all other shortcomings of Mr. Smith s 

 library for the great gift it brings us in the five volumes of 



