NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.
The second volume of Murray's British Classics, which is also the second of Mr. Cunningham's edition of The Works of Oliver Goldsmith, fully justifies all we said in commendation of its predecessor. It contains Goldsmith's Enquiry into the State of Polite Literature in Europe, and his admirable series of letters, entitled The Citizen of the World. Mr. Cunningham tells us that "he has been careful to mark all Goldsmith's own notes with his name;" his predecessors having in some instances adopted them as their own, and in others omitted them altogether, although they are at times curiously illustrative of the text. We are glad to see that Mr. Murray announces a new edition, revised and greatly enlarged, of Mr. Foster's valuable Life of Goldsmith, uniform with the present collection of Goldsmith's writings.
Memorials of the Canynges Family and their Times; Westbury College, Redcliffe Church, and Chatterton, by George Pryce, is the somewhat abbreviated title of a goodly octavo volume, on which Mr. Pryce has bestowed great industry and research, and by which he hopes to clear away the mists of error which have overshadowed the story of the Canynges family during the Middle Ages, and to show their connexion with the erection or restoration of Westbury College and Redcliff Church. As Mr. Pryce has some few inedited memoranda relating to Chatterton, he has done well to incorporate them in a volume dedicated in some measure to the history of Bristol's "Merchant Prince."
Poetical Works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Minor Contemporaneous Poets, and Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, edited by Robert Bell, forms the second volume of Parker's Annotated Edition of the British Poets. Availing himself, very properly, of the labours of his predecessors, Mr. Bell has given us very agreeable and valuable memoirs of Surrey and Buckhurst; and we have no doubt that this cheap edition of their works will be the means of putting them into the hands of many readers to whom they were before almost entirely unknown.
The Library Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, having had under their consideration the state of the engraved portraits in the possession of the Society, consulted one of the Fellows, Mr. W. Smith, as to the best mode of arrangement. That gentleman, having gone through the collection, advised that in future the Society should chiefly direct its attention to the formation of a series of engraved Portraits of the Fellows, and with great liberality presented about one hundred and fifty such portraits as his contribution towards such collection. Mr. Smith's notion is certainly a very happy one: and we mention that and his very handsome donation, in hopes of thereby rendering as good service to the Society's Collection of Portraits, as we are glad to learn has been rendered to their matchless Series of Proclamations by our occasional notices of them.