accuracy. We hurry over the heartpiercing narrative, only quoting the following striking picture of misery and fortitude.

"The road was one line of bloody footmarks, from the sore feet of the men; and on its sides lay the dead and the dying, Human nature could do no more. Donald M'Donald, the hardy Highlander, began to fail. He, as well as myself, had long been barefooted and lame; he, that had encouraged me to proceed, now himself lay down to die. For two days he had been almost blind, and unable, from a severe cold, to hold up his head. We sat down together-not a word escaped our lips. We looked around-then at each other, and closed our eyes. We felt there was no hope. We would have given in charge a farewell to our friends; but who was to carry it? There were, not far from us, here and there, above thirty in the

same situation with ourselves. There was nothing but groans, mingled with execrations, to be heard, between the pauses of the wind. I attempted to pray, and recommended myself to God; but my mind was so confused, I could not arrange my ideas. I almost think I was deranged. We had not sat half an hour; sleep was stealing upon me; when I perceived a bustle around me. It was an advanced party of the French: unconscious of the action, I started upon my feet, levelled my musket, which I had still retained, fired, and formed with the other stragglers. The French faced about and left us. There were more of them than of us.

The ac

tion, and the approach of danger in a shape which we had it in our power to repel, roused our dormant feelings, and we joined at

Castro."

The sequel of this disastrous march is too well known. We shall, how ever, extract an affecting account of poor Donald's blindness, which he lamented in the idiom of his native language, and of the reception of the shattered remains of our army in England.

.

"On the morning of the tenth day after our embarkation, I was condoling with Donald, who was now quite blind. I will never be a soldier again, O Thomas! I will be nothing but Donald the blind man. Had I been killed,-if you had left me to die in Spain,-it would have been far better to have lain still in a wreath of snow, than be, all my life, a blind beggar, a burden on my friends. Oh! if it would please God to take my life from me!' Land a-head! Old England once again'! was called from mouth to mouth. Donald burst into tears: I shall never see Scotland again; it is me that is the poor dark

VOL. IV.

man! A hundred ideas rushed upon my Donald clasped mind, and overcame me. me to his breast; our tears flowed uninterrupted.

We anchored the same day at Plymouth, but were not allowed to land; our Colonel kept us on board until we got new clothing. Upon our landing, the people came round us, showing all manner of kindness, carrying the lame and leading the blind. We were received into every house as if we had been their own relations. How proud did I feel to belong to such a people!"

Donald, however, recovered his sight, and embarked with others for the Walcheren expedition, a period of our history never to be recollected without sorrow and shame. Thomas gives a concise and distinct account of the transactions there, nothing extenuating, and setting down nought in malice. Here he was eight weeks confined in the hospital with the fatal fever of the country. One day he felt with unspeakable delight that he was able to move about, holding by the wall; he anticipated the feeling of fresh air, and the reviving force of nature with new pleasure. He opened the door, and the first object that met him on the threshhold was his friend Donald on the dead barrow, newly carried out from the hospital. He retired in horror, and was so imprest by the circumstance, that for some time after, when a door suddenly opened, he started back with involuntary horror as at some appari

tion.

ment for Lisbon; they were commandAgain he embarked with his regied by the brave Colonel Cadogan. His first speech to them on meeting and simplicity. "My lads, this is the an enemy we quote for its conciseness first affair I have ever been in with you. Shew me what you can do. Now or never!" Many instances occur of the humanity and good nature of this excellent officer, told without eulogium, in the simplest manner : such as his riding away a mile or two and bringing each of his men half a pound of tobacco, when they were dying with fatigue and hunger. Indeed, our friend Thomas deals neither in praise nor censure, and never extends his details beyond his personal observation. No man avowedly telling what he himself saw and felt, could be less an egotist; at the same time, he gives, in the language of a man of culti

X X

vated intellect, such pictures of the famine, fatigue, and extremity of suffering to which a soldier's life is exposed, (more particularly during the Peninsular warfare,) as yet none but a private centinel could produce. These gloomy scenes of suffering are at times relieved by gleams of calin enjoyment, when our people were quartered among the Spaniards, who were uniformly kind to them. Our countryman felt a glow of Scottish recollections warm his heart when he found the Spanish peasantry every night surrounded by their children, repeating the Lord's prayer and the twenty-third Psalm. The soldiers became at length so accustomed to the vicissitudes that awaited them, that the moment a full meal or a little wine was procured, they danced, sung, and burst into the most extravagant fits of merriment, though the enemy in superior force were in sight. Every ludicrous incident had this effect, even when in the midst of fatigue and danger. One instance of this nature occurred when the 71st were ordered to ford a river during a period of very hot service. There was a mill near the ford; many of the men went in when passing and helped themselves to quantities of flour; the Colonel came, and, incensed at this breach of discipline, threw a handful of flour on each of the culprits, that he might mark the millers as he called them, for after punishment. Meanwhile, a hen put her head out of his own pocket while he was riding along the line to distinguish those whom he had marked. The creature looked to one side and then to the other; the men began to laugh. He looked astonished and furions at them, when the Major calmly advised him to kill the hen, and there was no more said of the millers. The account of the attack of Fuentes de Honore is absolutely dramatic; we can only afford room for the onset.

“The Colonel told us off in three divi

sions, and gave us orders to charge up three different streets of the town, and force our way, without halting, to the other side. The General taking off his hat, said, God be with you,--quick march. We shouldered our arms. On reaching the gates we gave three cheers, and in we went. The inhabitants crying, Live the English, and the piper playing Johnny Cope," &c.

Indeed, the narrative of this hum

ble writer is always clear and rapid, and often animated and glowing. It is not interrupted by wise reflections, nor encumbered with mawkish sentiment. Confined to the ranks and the limited range of his own duties, he does not attempt accounts of battles, or characters of leaders. It is merely the actions in which the 71st bore a part, and the individual feelings of Thomas the soldier, who, far from parading either sensibility or superiority of intellect, honestly shews in the course of his narrative how much his mind was subdued to his condition, and his feelings blunted by the constant recurrence of sights and sounds of horror. Even his courage seems at last to have sunk into a mere mechanical indifference to outward circumstances. This gradual dereliction of the nobler feelings seems ever growing upon him, so that, in the hour of victory itself,

"The pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war

That make ambition virtue," seem to have lost their power, even, Such is the crushing influence of those over his young and ardent mind. that force the mind at length to seek perpetual hardships and privations relief in apathy. All this will be best explained by his account of the bat

tle of Waterloo, or rather of the

parts his own regiment had in it, for he pretends to nothing more.

"The artillery had been tearing away, since day-break, in different parts of the line. About twelve o'clock, we received orders to fall in, for attack. We then marched up to our position, where we lay on the face of a brae, covering a brigade of guns.

We were so overcome by the fatigue of the two days' march, that, scarce had we lain down, until many of us fell asleep. I slept sound for some time, while the cannon-balls, plunging in amongst us, killed a great many. I was suddenly a wakened. A ball struck the ground a little below me, turned me heels-over-head, broke my musket in pieces, and killed a fused, and knew not whether I was woundI was stunned and conlad at my side. ed or not. I felt a numbness in my arm for sometime. We lay thus about an hour and a half under a dreadful fire, which cost us about 60 men, while we had never fired a shot "

"The noise and smoke were dreadful. At this time, I could see but a very little way from me; but, all around, the wounded and slain lay very thick. We then

surprise be too great.' Away he went,-I could not remain, but followed him; and, the next minute, I was in the arms of my mother."

Here we could have wished the book had closed, and that our gallant soldier were still living under the roof of his parent, and within the reach of his country's love. But we stated at the outset, the melancholy conclusion, that his mother died, and that we had the discomfort to see him once more thrown loose as a wanderer over the wide world! How earnestly must every person, capable of appreciating the mind displayed in this narrative, wish that the desolate heart of the writer may be cheered, by knowing, in the place of his voluntary exile, that his countrymen share in his feelings, and lament his fate!

count for the numerous pieces assigned in the printed copies to Shakespeare, which he had no concern in claiming to himself, and some of which have since been ascertained to have proceeded from the pens of other dramatists. One of these I noticed in my last article, in reference to the play of Sir John Giacastle, published in 1600, and regarding which a remarkable circumstance (that would, no doubt, have afforded Messrs Steevens or Malone an opportunity of filling several pages with notes and comments) has come to my knowledge, viz. that an edition of this "History" has lately come into the possession of a gentleman, equally distinguished by his zeal and taste in these pursuits, bearing the date of the year 1600, and without the name of Shakespeare upon the title-page. The fact probably was, that the book

ERS WHO PRECEDED SHAKESPEARE.

No. III.

Ir any of your readers suppose that my purpose is to detect what some may call the plagiarisms of Shakespeare, they will find themselves much mistaken: I have no such object. Coincidences in particular passages between him and others may, and have been long ago pointed out; but I do not recollect a single instance in which it has been fairly proved, that this most original of all writers has been guilty of a plagiarism properly so called, a literary theft, the unacknowledged appropriation of that which was the production of some other man. In order to set this matter in a clear point of view, it may be necessary to observe, that at the time Shakespeare flourished, the laws of literary property were ill defined and little understood; in our own day no author's name appears upon the titlepage of a book without his express knowledge and consent, but it is most probable that our great dramatist had nothing to do with the printing and publication of any one of his plays; in truth, they became the property of the theatre, not of the author, and when they devolved into the hands of a bookseller, he not unfrequently affixed what name he thought was most likely to secure him a rapid sale. This fact has been sufficiently illustrated by the industrious historians of our stage, and I only allude to it to ac

not sell while it was anonymous, added to it the name of the dramatic writer who was at that time most popular. It is fit, however, to observe, that there are some important varia tions between the two copies, some of which I will notice in a subsequent number, when I have been favoured with a sight of this valuable curiosity.

This is a wholesale kind of embezzlement, with which very few were ever so ignorant as to suppose Shakespeare had any connection. There is, however, another species of appropriation, of which no man at all acquainted with the subject would deny, or wish to deny, that he was guilty, if, indeed, it be not a total misapplica tion of the word. I mean, that, as his cbject was, and the object of every writer for the public stage must be, to gratify the prevailing taste, he took up popular stories, and put them into a dramatic form, or even revived existing plays, which had once been favourites, but had fallen into disuse; by remodelling and adding to them, he rendered them once more the subjects of theatrical applause. But, does he deserve any censure for this proceeding? Was there any thing clandestine in it, or any thing like "fathering upon himself the labours of his predecessors?" Does any body think of charging plagiarism upon the writers of those popular dramas that go under the names of Guy Mannering" or "Rob Roy?" Certainly

not; yet, so far as appropriation is concerned, that is exactly a case in point. Does any body dream of blaming the compounder of "The Merchant of Bruges," because he inserted the greater part of Beaumont and Fletcher's Beggar's Bush? Yet writers have been found with so much of that worst kind of ignorance, which, because it knows little, will be taught nothing, as to call in question the fairness of the mode in which Shakespeare acquired his reputation. The stories and the plays he adopted and adapted were well known to every one of his audiences, and he no more imposed upon them than such obstinately ignorant critics impose upon the general good sense and understanding of mankind.

I cannot illustrate this better than by a short reference to Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, respecting which an important discovery has been made since the publication of the last edition of the works of our greatest dramatist. The first printed copy of this comedy is contained in the folio of 1623, though it has been conjectured that it came much earlier from the press, and was acted in 1598,

or at all events in 1606. It is known

also, that, in 1607, Nicholas Ling published A pleasaunt conceited Historie called the Taming of a Shrew," which is not Shakespeare's, though very like it in many respects, and which had been entered on the Stationers' books as early as 1594. It is obvious, therefore, that the piece was very popular, and yet it has been stated, with every degree of probability, that Shakespeare employed the

materials of it as the foundation of his more finished and more highly ornamented superstructure. This fact, however, could not be fully established, as the date when Shakespeare's play was acted was prior to any known edition of the pleasaunt conceited Historie" and it might be said that the latter was founded upon the former, and not the former upon the latter. This point is, however, now put beyond doubt by the existence of a copy of the old comedy, dated as early as 1594, four years before even Mr Chalmers contends that Shakespeare's production was performed, and twelve years before the date assigned to that event by Malone. As this is a very singular relic, perhaps the title at

length may not be unacceptable; it is, "A pleasant conceited Historie, called the Taming of a Shrew. As it was sundry times acted by the Right Honorable the Earle of Pembrooke his seruaunts. Printed at London by Peter Short, and are to be sold by Cuthbert Burbie at his shop at the Royall Exchange, 1594." I will follow it by a short extract, copied from the original with great exactness, in order to show the nature of the production, and to prove that the edition of 1607 was not merely the same impression with a new title-page. It is from the opening of the piece.

Enter a Tapster, beating out of his doores