Eugene Sue offers us a new novel, L' Avarice, the last of his series on the seven cardinal sins, in one volume.
The two volumes of De Maistre's letters and inedited trifles, Lettres et Opuscules inédits, with a biographical notice written by his son, will be very acceptable, not only to Catholics, but to all who can rise above differences of creed, and recognize the amazing power of this great writer. These volumes present him, en déshabille, and he is worthy knowing so.
Jules Janin's Letters on the Exhibition, reprinted in a neat volume in Paris as well as at London, have procured him the honor of a very complimentary autograph letter from Prince Albert. The popularity which Janin has contrived to gain, not only in his own country, but in Europe—and not only among the middle classes, those great patrons of literary men nowadays, but among royal and aristocratic personages also—this popularity is envied by scores of writers of far greater pretensions.
The French have a very common and most unjust practice—that of appropriating the authorship of works which they only translate. A complete edition of Fielding has appeared under the title "Œuvres de l'Abbé St. Romme," or some such name. Ducis has passed himself off as the author of Hamlet and Macbeth, and the other great plays of Shakspeare which he has dared to mutilate. There are half a dozen translations of "Paradise Lost," in which the name of some obscure varlet figures on the title-page, while that of Milton is not once mentioned. There are editions of the "Decline and Fall," by Monsieur So-and-so, without the slightest indication that the work is that of Gibbon; and Bulwer and Scott, and indeed all English authors of note, dead and living, have been pillaged in the same way. The German and Italian authors have suffered the same treatment from these literary wreckers.
An edition of Brentano's works has been published in six volumes. As one of the most famous of the "Romantic School," Brentano is interesting to all students of German literature, and the present publication receives additional stimulus from the knowledge that Brentano, late in life, looked upon his works as "dangerous," if not "devilish," and destroyed all the copies he could lay hands on.