PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

IN preparing for the press a second edition of this little work, the author has endeavoured to render it more worthy of the approbation and kindly feeling with which it has been received: she cannot better express her sense of both than by justifying, as far as it is in her power, the cordial and flattering tone of all the public criticisms. It is to the great name of SHAKSPEARE, that a bond of sympathy among all who speak his language, and to the subject of the work, not to its own merits, that she attributes the success it has met with,-success the more delightful, because, in truth, it was from the very first so entirely unlooked for, as to be a matter of surprise as well as of pleasure and gratitude.

In this edition there are many corrections, and some additions, which the author hopes may be deemed improvements. She has