Ingoldsby Legends; Or Mirth and Marvels. By Thomas Ingoldsby, Esq. (the Rev. Richard Harris Barhaw.) First Series. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 16mo.
It is strange that these curious pieces have not been reprinted before. Few contributions to periodical literature, during the present century, are so unmistakably original, and so irresistibly ludicrous, as these legendary audacities; and they are all the more notable from the fact that their author was a clergyman, and passed through life with the reputation of being a pious one. Their chief characteristic is irreverence, not only as regards divine things, but in respect to the sanctities of human life. Indeed, their comic effect results, in a great degree, from the electric shocks of surprise caused by their recklessness, the author’s wit being nothing if not untamed. A spice of the Satanic is in every legend. A mischievousness, which is literally devilish good, plays its wild pranks even with horrors, and impishly extracts fantastical farce out of tragedy. The author’s fancy is a worthy instrument of his tricksy disposition, and is ever ready with queer images and quaint analogies, to support his most venturesome caricatures of sin, death, and the devil. His learning, also, is very great, especially in departments of literature which are unfamiliar to ordinary students, such as old treatises on magic, witchcraft, and astrology, and the like; and this, under the direction of his wit, increases the grotesque effect of his legends. As the result of all these qualities and acquirements we have the most audacious wit of the age, and one of its greatest masters of versification.
The Life and Letters of Barthold George Niebuhr. With Essays on his Character and Influence. By the Chevalier Bunsen and Professors Brandis and Lorbell. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.
This thick volume of some six hundred pages is crammed with interesting matter. The letters of Niebuhr are among the most instructive in literature, and they range in subject over an immense extent of knowledge. The vigor of his character, and its sterling honesty, are as apparent throughout as the vast acquirements and vivid conceptions of his intellect. His comments on the poets and philosophers of Germany will be read with great interest, as he knew many of them intimately, and expresses his opinions of their defects and merits with singular sincerity and acuteness. His views of Goethe, especially, are entitled to the most thoughtful consideration. The essays on Niebuhr, at the end of the volume, are excellent.
The Solar System. By J. Russell Hind, Foreign Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, etc. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.
This is another of Putnam’s admirable publications, the first of a series on popular science, and similar in form to his “Semi-Monthly Library.” The present volume contains two hundred pages, is elegantly printed, and is sold at the low price of twenty-five cents, which is cheapening the solar system beyond all precedent. The volume is succinctly and clearly written, and contains the latest “news from the empyrean.” The only defect we have noticed is in the account given of the discovery of Neptune. The author appears to be ignorant of the important connection which Professor Pierce, of Harvard University, has established with this new planet. He did not, it is true, discover it; but he demonstrated that the planet which was discovered was not the planet which Le Verrier was seeking.