with a remote idea, which, rather than throw it away, he obtrudes upon his reader, involved in inextricable obscurity.  We cannot agree with the editor in praising his delineation of the female character:  less than women in their passions, they are more than masculine in their exploits and sufferings; but, excepting Spinella in “The Lady’s Trial,” and perhaps Penthea, we do not remember in Ford’s plays, any example of that meekness and modesty which compose the charm of the female character....

Mr. Weber is known to the admirers of our antient literature by two publications which, although they may not be deemed of great importance in themselves, have yet a fair claim to notice.  We speak of the battle of Flodden Field, and the Romances of the fourteenth century:  which, as far as we have looked into them, appear very creditable to his industry and accuracy:  his good genius, we sincerely regret to say, appears in a great measure to have forsaken him from the moment that he entered upon the task of editing a dramatic poet.

In the mechanical construction of his work Mr. Weber has followed the last edition of Massinger, with a servility which appears, in his mind, to have obviated all necessity of acknowledging the obligation:  we will not stop to enquire whether he might not have found a better model; but proceed to the body of the work.  As we feel a warm interest in everything which regards our ancient literature, on the sober cultivation of which the purity, copiousness, and even harmony of the English language must, in no small degree, depend, we shall notice some of the peculiarities of the volumes before us, in the earnest hope that while we relieve Ford from a few of the errors and misrepresentations with which he is here encumbered, we may convince Mr. Weber that something more is necessary to a faithful editor than the copying of printers’ blunders, and to a judicious commentator, than a blind confidence in the notes of every collection of old plays.

Mr. Weber’s attempts at explanation (for explanations it seems, there must be) are sometimes sufficiently humble.  “Carriage,” he tells us, “is behaviour.”  It is so; we remember it in our spelling-book, among the words of three syllables, we have therefore no doubt of it.  But you must have, rejoins the editor; and accordingly, in every third or fourth page, he persists in affirming that “carriage is behaviour.”  In the same strain of thankless kindness, he assures us that “fond is foolish,” “but, except,” “content, contentment,” and vice versa, “period [Transcriber’s note:  ‘peroid’ in original], end,” “demur, delay,” “ever, always,” “sudden, quickly,” “quick, suddenly,” and so on through a long vocabulary of words of which a girl of six years old would blush to ask the meaning....