We are sorry that Mr. Headley has written his biography with such a marked leaning to Cromwell. We believe that a large majority of readers will obtain their notions of the Protector from his pages, and that they will be no better republicans thereby. The very brilliancy and ability of his work will only make it more influential upon the popular mind. _A Supplement to the Plays of William Shakspeare. Comprising Seven Dramas which have been ascribed to his Pen but are not included with his Writings in Modern Editions. Edited, with Notes, and an Introduction to each Play, by William Gilmore Simms. New York: Geo. F. Cooledge & Brother. 1 vol. 8vo._ The public are under obligations to Mr. Simms, not only for reprinting a series of dramas which are objects of curiosity from their connection with the name of Shakspeare, but for the elegant and ingenious introductions he has furnished from his own pen. With regard to the question whether Shakspeare did or did not write these plays, our opinion has ever inclined to the negative, and a careful perusal of Mr. Simms's views has rather confirmed than shaken our impression. The internal evidence, with the exception of passages in the Two Noble Kinsmen, is strongly against the hypothesis of Shakspeare's authorship, and the external evidence appears to us unsatisfactory. Mr. Simms's idea is that they were the productions of Shakspeare's youth and apprenticeship, and on this supposition he accounts for their obvious inferiority to the acknowledged plays. Now it seems to us that the juvenile efforts of the world's master-mind would give some evidence of his powers, however imperfect might be the form of their expression; and especially that they would not resemble the matured products of contemporary mediocrity. Of the plays in the present volume, the only one which has the character of youthful genius is the tragedy of Lecrine, and this is the youth of Marlowe rather than of Shakspeare. The London Prodigal and the Puritan, Lord Cromwell and Sir John Oldcastle, have no trace of youthful fire or even rant. They are the offspring of sober, contented, irreclaimable, unimprovable mediocrity, with a decided tendency to the stupid rather than the sublime. They were probably the journey-work of some of the legion playwrights connected with the London theatres, and cannot be compared with the dramas of Jonson, Deckar, Middleton, Fletcher, Marston, Tourneur, Massinger and Ford. They lack the vitality, the _vim_, which burns and blazes even in the works of the second class dramatists of the time. The Yorkshire Tragedy bears the stamp of Middleton rather than Shakspeare. With regard to the Two Noble Kinsmen, perhaps the greatest play included in the collection of Beaumont and Fletcher, we think that the Shaksperian passages might have been imitations of Shakspeare's manner, and we have a sufficiently high opinion of Fletcher's genius to suppose that this