called him the prince's jester.' Very profound, too, is the casual remark upon the conduct of Claudio and his friends when the character of Hero is suddenly blasted conduct which has often perplexed older readers for its heartlessness and insane credulity: The Prince and Claudio left the church without staying to see if Hero would recover, or at all regarding the distress into which they had thrown Leonato, so hard-hearted had their anger made them."
If one must hunt for a flaw to show critical discernment, it is a pity that in Pericles, otherwise so successfully handled, with judicious ignoring of what is manifestly not Shakespeare's, a beautiful passage is marred by the omission of a word that is the very heart of the simile:—
See how she 'gins to blow into life's flower again,
says Cerimon, as the seemingly dead Thaisa revives. "See, she begins to blow into life again," Mary has it.
The Tales appeared first in eight sixpenny numbers; but were soon collected in two small volumes "embellished," or, as it turned out, disfigured by twenty copper-plate illustrations, of which as of other attendant vexations Lamb complains in a letter to Wordsworth, dated Jan. 29, 1807:—
"We have booked off from the 'Swan and Two Necks,' Lad Lane, this day (per coach), the Tales from Shakespeare. You will forgive the plates, when I tell you they were left to the direction of Godwin, who left the choice of subjects to the bad baby [Mrs. Godwin], who from mischief (I suppose) has chosen one from dd beastly vulgarity (vide Merch. Venice), when no atom of authority was in the tale to justify it;
