stead than Captain Ager and his conscientious honour; and he would be considered a far better teacher of morality than old Rowley or Middleton if they were living. * * * * * Though some resemblance may be traced between the Charms in Macbeth and the Incantations in this Play, which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality of Shakspeare. His Witches are distinguished from the Witches of Middleton by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman plotting some dire mischief might resort for occasional consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men. From the moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is spellbound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination. These Witches can hurt the body: those have power over the soul. Hecate in Middleton has a Son, a low buffoon: the hags of Shakspeare have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul Anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of them.--Except Hecate, they have no names; which heightens their mysteriousness. Their names, and some of the properties, which Middleton has given to his Hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But in a lesser degree the witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strife, _like a thick scurf o'er life_. Here surely we have the right stuff. Terse, pregnant sentences; few words, but going to the very heart of the matter. That Lamb was justly proud of his pioneer work in this field of literary research is certain, for in a short autobiography which he prepared for a friend's album--in what has been called "the briefest, and perhaps the wittiest and most truthful autobiography in the language"--he wrote as follows: He also was the first to draw the Public attention to the old English Dramatists, in a work called "Specimens of English Dramatic Writers who lived about the Time of Shakspeare," published about fifteen years since.