The Lily and the Bee, by Samuel Warren (published by Harper and Brothers), is a reprint of a rhapsodical prose-poem, suggested by the strange and beautiful spectacle of the Crystal Palace. The author has selected a wild and incoherent form for the embodiment of his impressions, but it is pervaded by a vein of rich, imaginative thought, which no one can follow without being touched with its spirit of suggestive musing. Whoever peruses this volume, as the writer intimates, should suspend his judgment until the completion, and then both the Lily and the Bee may be found speaking with some significance.
Mayhew's London Labor (published by Harper and Brothers) has reached its Fourteenth Number, and fully sustains the interest of the earlier portions of the work. It is a faithful sketch of one aspect of London life, drawn from nature, and in graphic effect is hardly inferior to the high-wrought creations of fiction.
The Eighteenth Part of Lossing's Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution (published by Harper and Brothers), is now completed, and the successive parts will be issued rapidly until the work is closed. This noble tribute to the memory of our revolutionary fathers has been kindly and cordially received by the American people. We rejoice in its success, for the spirit of patriotism which it breathes is as wholesome, as the execution of its charming pictures is admirable.
Malmiztic the Toltec, by W.W. Fosdick (Cincinnati, Wm. H. Moore and Co.), is a romance of Mexico, reproducing the times of Montezuma and Cortez. In spite of the desperate cacophony of the title, and the high-flown magnificence of the preface, it is a work of considerable originality and power. The style of the author would be improved by an unrelenting application of the pruning-knife, but he shows a talent of description and narrative, which, after abating the luxuriance of a first effort, might be turned to excellent account. We hope to hear from him again.
The Mind and the Heart, by Franklin W. Fish, is the title of a little volume in verse by a very youthful poet, written before the completion of his eighteenth year. We utterly disapprove the publication of such precocious efforts, as they have no interest for the reader but that of a literary curiosity, and none but a perilous reflex influence on the unfledged author. These effusions, however, are highly creditable specimens of the kind, and show a facility of versification and a command of poetic thought and imagery, which give a fair promise of future excellence. We will not subject them to a harsh criticism, which they certainly do not deserve, but we advise the young aspirant to cling to the pen in private, and for the present to cherish a profound horror of printing ink. (Adriance, Sherman, and Co.)
A new translation of Dante's Divina Commedia has recently been made in England by C.B. Cayley. The volume published, containing the "Inferno," is to be followed by the "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso." The metre of the original is preserved. A London journal says that "it is by far the most effectual transcript of the original that has yet appeared in English verse: in other words, the nearest approximation hitherto made to what the poet, such as we know him, might have written had he been of our time and country, instead of being a Tuscan in the thirteenth century. To have done this office with tolerable success for any great poet is a claim to praise: in a translator of Dante it is something more. Mr. Cayley's one main ground of superiority to previous translators lies in the true perception that nothing but plain and bold language in the copy can represent the bold plainness of the original. He has accordingly handled our whole vocabulary with unusual frankness; and we admire his skill in pressing apt though uncouth forms into the service, as much as we approve of the right feeling that taught him how Dante may be most nearly approached."
The Hymn for All Nations, 1851, by M.F. Tupper, D.C.L., says The Athenæum "is at least a philological and typographical curiosity. The hymn—'would it were worthier!'—is translated into thirty different languages, and printed in the characters of each country."