To serious readers these critical notes will constitute the most valuable part of Mr. Tovey’s labours; they are, in truth, the speciality of this particular edition, and will make it indispensable to all students of this most interesting poet. And now Mr. Tovey will, we trust, forgive us if, with due deference, we point out what seem to us to be defects in his work. The first thing that might have been expected from so learned and careful an editor of Thomson was an adequate discussion of the great problem of the authorship of _Rule Britannia_, and the second an exposure of one of the most extraordinary “mare’s-nests” to be found in English literature. But nothing, we regret to say, can be more perfunctory and inadequate than the two notes in which the first question is hurried over with references to _Notes and Queries_, and nothing more irritating than the confusion worse confounded in which Mr. Tovey leaves the second. We shall therefore make no apology for entering somewhat at length into both these questions. And first for the authorship of _Rule Britannia_. The facts are these. In 1740 Thomson and Mallet wrote, in conjunction, a masque entitled _Alfred_, which, on 1st August in that year, was represented before the Prince and Princess of Wales at Clifden. It was in two acts, and it contained six lyrics, the last being _Rule Britannia_, which is entitled an “Ode,” the music being by Dr. Arne. In 1745 Arne turned the piece into an opera, and also into “a musical drama.” By this time the lyric had become very popular, but there is no evidence to show that it had been definitely attributed to either of the coadjutors. In 1748 Thomson died. In 1751 Mallet re-issued _Alfred_, but in another form. It was entirely remodelled, and almost entirely re-written, and, in an advertisement prefixed to the work, he says: “According to the present arrangement of the fable I was obliged to reject a great deal of what I had written in the other: neither could I retain, of my friend’s part, more than three or four speeches, and a part of one song.” Now, of the parts retained from the former work, there were the first three stanzas of _Rule Britannia_, the three others being excised, and their place supplied by three stanzas written by Lord Bolingbroke. If Mallet is to be believed, then, “part of one song” must refer, either to a song in the third scene of the second act, beginning “From those eternal regions bright,” or to _Rule Britannia_, for these are the only lyrics in which portions of the lyrics in the former edition are retained. _Rule Britannia_ is, it is true, entitled “An Ode” in the former edition, and the other lyric “A Song,” so that Mallet would certainly seem to imply that what he had retained of his friend’s work was the portion of the song referred to, and not _Rule Britannia_. But, as Mallet was notoriously a man who could not be believed on oath, and was an adept in all those bad arts by which little men filch honours which