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The Hundred Mery Talys alluded to by Shakespeare in Much Ado about Nothing, have long been known to English readers by name; and an imperfect copy of the work was discovered, So far back as 1815, by the late Rev. J. J. Conybeare, and reprinted in the same year in S. W. Singer's Jest Book, a book now very rare. Till within the last two or three years, it had been thought that the imperfect copy found by Mr. Conybeare was unique; but it appears that Dr. Oesterley lately met with another copy of the work in the library of the University of Gottingen, aud that on carefully examining it, be found to his surprise that it was complete in every detail. The copy, it appears, was purchased for the University library in 1768, but nearly a century passed away before its real value as a curiosity was known. It is only fair to state here, that in 1864 Mr. Hazlitt reprinted the imperfect original which Mr. Conybeare had discovered fifty years before, so that the main substance of the Hundred Mery Talys is not wholly unknown to the students of the English literature of the 16th century. But the work was disfigured by hiatus and lacunae in upwards of five-and-twenty places, not to say anything of the fact of six of the Talys being most unsatisfactory in their text, which had to be supplied by guess work where the original was too much damaged to be deciphered. But it is now for the first time that the general reader has the book complete; we are bound to add that Dr. Oesterley has discharged the office of editor most carefully and conscientiously; and though his notes do not contain all that might be collated in illustration of the sources, German, French, Latin, and English, whence the C. Mery Talys were derived, yet they are full of varied and valuable information, and always thoroughly to the point. --The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Review, Vol. 2.

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