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LECTURES ON DRAMATIC LITERATURE, vol. ii, page 252.

We agree to the truth of this last observation, but not to the justice of its application to some of the plays here mentioned. It is true that Shakespeare's best works are very superior to those of Marlow, or Heywood, but it is not true that the best of the doubtful plays above enumerated are superior or even equal to the best of theirs. THE YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY, which Schlegel speaks of as an undoubted production of our author's, is much more in the manner of Heywood than of Shakespeare. The effect is indeed overpowering, but the mode of producing it is by no means poetical. The praise which Schlegel gives to THOMAS, LORD CROMWELL, and to SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, is altogether exaggerated. They are very indifferent compositions, which have not the slightest pretensions to rank with HENRY V or

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