The play with which Mr. Bullen, altering the arrangement adopted by Mr. Dyce, opens his edition of Middleton, is a notable example of the best and the worst qualities which distinguish or disfigure the romantic comedy of the Shakespearean age. The rude and reckless composition, the rough intrusion of savorless farce, the bewildering combinations of incident and the far more bewildering fluctuations of character--all the inconsistencies, incongruities, incoherences of the piece are forgotten when the reader remembers and reverts to the passages of exquisite and fascinating beauty which relieve and redeem the utmost errors of negligence and haste. To find anything more delightful, more satisfying in its pure and simple perfection of loveliness, we must turn to the very best examples of Shakespeare's youthful work. Nay, it must be allowed that in one or two of the master's earliest plays--in "Two Gentlemen of Verona," for instance--we shall find nothing comparable for charm and sincerity of sweet and passionate fancy with such enchanting verses as these: O happy persecution, I embrace thee With an unfettered soul! So sweet a thing It is to sigh upon the rack of love, Where each calamity is groaning witness Of the poor martyr's faith. I never heard Of any true affection, but 'twas nipt With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats The leaves off the spring's sweetest book, the rose. Love, bred on earth, is often nursed in hell: By rote it reads woe, ere it learn to spell. Again: the "secure tyrant, but unhappy lover," whose prisoner and rival has thus expressed his triumphant resignation, is counselled by his friend to "go laugh and lie down," as not having slept for three nights; but answers, in words even more delicious than his supplanter's: Alas, how can I? he that truly loves Burns out the day in idle fantasies; And when the lamb bleating doth bid good-night Unto the closing day, then tears begin To keep quick time unto the owl, whose voice Shrieks like the bellman in the lover's ears: Love's eye the jewel of sleep, O, seldom wears! The early lark is wakened from her bed, Being only by love's plaints disquieted; And, singing in the morning's ear, she weeps, Being deep in love, at lovers' broken sleeps: But say a golden slumber chance to tie With silken strings the cover of love's eye, Then dreams, magician-like, mocking present Pleasures, whose fading leaves more discontent.