NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.
We have received from Messrs. Rivington, four volumes of their new and complete edition of The Works and Correspondence of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, and we do not know that a more valuable contribution could be made to our stores of historical and political literature, than this handsome collection of the writings of one whom Sir Robert Peel pronounced "the most profound of the philosophic statesmen of modern times." Dear to all lovers of literature as must be the memory of Burke, the friend of Johnson, who declared, "he was the only man whose common conversation corresponded with the fame which he had in the world," and of Goldsmith, who complained that—
"He to party gave up what was meant for mankind;"
and that he
... "too deep for his hearers still went on refining,
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining;"—
the present aspect of the political world compels us to look at him rather as a politician than as a man of letters. Considering, therefore, not only the profoundly philosophical character of his political works, but also the elevated tone of political morality which is displayed in the writings of Edmund Burke—a wisdom and a morality rendered still more attractive by the unrivalled eloquence with which they are enunciated—the present handsome and cheap collection of
those writings is alike creditable to the enterprise of the publishers, and well calculated to exercise a beneficial influence upon the political condition of the country. It would indeed be well if all who aspire to seats in the new parliament would fit themselves for such positions by a study of the writings of Edmund Burke.
Mr. Willis has just issued a neat reprint of what has now become a very scarce volume, The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, a work which may be regarded as a model of political satire. It is accompanied by occasional notes elucidating allusions now become obscure through lapse of time, and the blanks in the text have been filled up with the names of the various persons introduced or alluded to. Some attempt has also been made to identify the various authors by whom the several articles were written; but we are surprised to find this so imperfectly executed, for when the editor speaks of the authorship being in many cases mere matter of conjecture, it is clear that he did not know of the very curious, and, we may add, authentic list, furnished to the third volume (p. 348.) of this journal by Mr. Hawkins of the British Museum; who has also given a history of the work, and of the manner in which it was conducted, which ought to have been made use of.
Books Received.—Legal Iambics in Prose, suggested by the present Chancery Crisis, a quaint discourse, in which there is no small learning and humour, and to which may be applied, with some variation, Gay's well-known Epilogue:
"Our pamphlet has a moral, and no doubt
You all have sense enough to find it out."
An Essay upon the Ghost Belief of Shakspeare, by Alfred Roffe, is a little pamphlet well deserving perusal, in which the author—who holds that ghost belief, rightly understood, is most rational and salutary—endeavours to show that it must have had the sanction of such a thinker as Shakspeare.—Rome in the Nineteenth Century, containing a complete account of the Ruins of the Ancient City, the Remains of the Middle Ages, and the Monuments of Modern Times, by Charlotte A. Eaton. Fifth Edition, Vol. I., the new issue of Bohn's Illustrated Library, with its thirty-four engraved illustrations, will be found a very useful and instructive guide to the "Eternal City."—The Heroides, the Amours, Art of Love, &c., of Ovid, translated (with the judicious exception of the more questionable passages, which are left in the original Latin), forming the new volume of Bohn's Classical Library. In his Standard Library we have now the fifth and concluding volume of what has been well described as "the enthralling Biographies of Vasari." Thus for considerably less than one pound has the English lover of Art the means of possessing one of the most interesting and instructive works on the subject of his favourite study ever produced. The work deserves, and, we trust, will meet with a very wide circulation.