The best piece in the volume is Mr. Darley’s biography and criticism of Beaumont & Fletcher. The style is a little too much elaborated, and the opinions are not always free from prejudice, but the author writes like a poet, and really paints his subjects to the intellect of the reader—catching and conveying the spirit of the dramatists, as well as subjecting it to a high and manly criticism. In most essays of this kind it is impossible to gain any notion of the author’s mind and individuality, amid all the words squandered on events of his life and the detail of his writings. This is illustrated in the biography of Ben Jonson, by Gifford. The “mountain belly and rocky face” of old Ben are hidden behind the form of his reviewer. It is like reading a snapping-turtle’s account of a whale, in which the said snapping-turtle contrives to make it out that the whale is just his size and conformation, and proves it by “undoubted facts.” The account of Massinger and Ford is by Henry Nelson Coleridge, the son of the poet. It is rather brilliantly written, and contains much information relating to the time of James I. and Charles I. The lives of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, are in Leigh Hunt’s most characteristic style of thought and expression, and consequently sparkle with many a bright fancy and jaunty impertinence. As his band of dramatists were gentlemen of easy virtue, both in literature and life, and violated all the decencies and moralities which keep society together in the most brilliant way imaginable, they are very fortunate in having a biographer who launches no thunderbolts of indignation, and indulges in no yelps of rhetorical horror. This volume of “lives” is almost indispensable to the lover of the old dramatists, and gives on the whole, the best account of their moral and intellectual character which can be obtained. The publishers have done well in presenting them in such an elegant and available form. * * * * * _Washington and his Generals. By J. T. Headley. New York: Baker & Scribner. Vol. I., 12mo._