but surely he should have known that the expectations which he attributes to Sir William Gascoigne were not disappointed, and that (although the contrary is generally believed) the object of Falstaff’s menace was superseded (by Sir William Hankford) March 29th, 1413, just eight days after the prince whom he committed to prison came to the throne,—­a removal the promptness of which would satisfy the strictest disciplinarian in the Democratic party.  The Records show this; but his Lordship need not have gone to them; he would have found it mentioned, and the authority cited, by Tyler in his “Memoirs of Henry the Fifth.”

And while we are considering the disparity between his Lordship’s performances and his pretensions, we may as well examine his fitness to bring about a “fusion of Law and Literature,” which he says, with some reason, have, like Law and Equity, been too long kept apart in England.  We fear, that, whatever may be the excellence of his Lordship’s intentions, he must set himself seriously to the task of acquiring more skill in the use of the English tongue, and a nicer discrimination between processes of thought, before his writings will prove to be the flux that promotes that fusion.

For, in the third paragraph of his letter, he says to Mr. Collier, “I cannot refuse to communicate to you my sentiments upon the subject,” and in the following sentence adds, that this communication of his “sentiments” will drive from his mind “the recollection of the wranglings of Westminster Hall.”  His Lordship probably meant to refer to the communication of his opinions, for which word “sentiments” is not usually substituted, except by gentlemen who remark with emphasis, “Them’s my sentiments”; and he also probably intended to allude to the memory of the wranglings of which he is professionally a witness,—­having forgotten, for a moment, that recollection is a purely voluntary act, and not either a condition or a faculty of the mind.

Again, when his Lordship says, (p. 18,) “That during this interval (A.D. 1579 to 1586) he [Shakespeare] was merely an operative, earning his bread by manual labor, in stitching gloves, sorting wool, or killing calves, no sensible man can possibly imagine” we applaud the decision; but can hardly do as much for the language in which it is expressed.  Lord Campbell quite surely meant to say that no man could possibly believe, or suppose, or assent to the proposition which he sets forth; and when (on p. 26) he again says, “I do not imagine that when he [Shakespeare] went up to London, he carried a tragedy in his pocket,” there can be no doubt that his Lordship meant to say, “I do not think that when,” etc.  He should again have gathered from his Shakespearean studies a lesson in the exact use of language, and have learned from the lips of “that duke hight Theseus” that imagination has nothing to do with assent to or dissent from a proposition, but that