The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 8vo.
This is a splendid edition of one of the most popular of English poets. It has ten fine steel embellishments, and its general execution places it very nearly on a level with the English edition. As a specimen of American typography it is very honorable to the enterprising publishers. It is the only complete edition of Moore ever published in this country, being reprinted from the London collection, lately edited by the poet himself, and containing his autobiographical prefaces and illustrations. In these the poet very pleasantly prattles about his own life and works, and is exhibited as the most graceful of egotists. The volume contains an immense number of brilliant verses, ranging in subject from the romantic poem to the political squib. Without depth of passion, elevation of sentiment, or grandeur of imagination, the poems of Moore still evince a quickness of sensibility, an opulence of fancy, and a brilliancy of wit, which have made them among the most popular works produced within the present century. His poems are lit up with an incessant shower of sparkling fancies. Almost everything he has written is full of glitter and point—his sentiment as well as his satire. His songs are often epigrams of feeling. Though, as a poet, he can hardly stand by the side of Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, or Byron, in the greatest qualities of the bard, yet no one can glance over the present volume without being impressed with the brilliant genius of its author, and fascinated with the stores of wit, fancy, learning and sentiment, which glisten and gleam on every page.
The French Revolution. A History. By Thomas Carlyle. Newly Revised by the Author, with Index. New York: Wiley & Putnam. 3 Parts. 12mo.
This is Carlyle’s grandest work—a prose epic on the great event of modern history. In our narrow limits we cannot hope to do any thing like justice, to the imagination, fancy, learning, humor, pathos, sublimity, characterization, with which the volumes abound. In spite of some obstinate faults, in spite of much false and pernicious doctrine, in spite of the style, no work ever written on the French Revolution equals this in the clearness with which it represents the causes of that revolution, in the vividness with which it brings up its different events in magnificent pictures, speaking directly to the eye, and in the grandeur of its delineations of the principal actors in the drama. The portraits of Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, are masterpieces. Every page glows with vital life. The words are all alive with meaning. They paint objects so distinctly that we become observers of the scenes to which they relate. Carlyle, in truth, is a master of expression as distinguished from mere fluency. He selects the “inevitable best word,” or compounds it, with an unmistakable tact and sureness. If to his other great qualities he joined calmness, comprehension, mental honesty, the present work would be almost perfect. Viewing it with an eye to all its faults, it must be pronounced a work of great genius and power.
The Life and Correspondence of John Foster. Edited by J. E. Ryland. New York: Wiley & Putnam. 2 vols. 12mo.
Foster is well known as the author of a volume of essays, laden with weighty thought and acute observations on character and life. The present volume, containing his letters and journals from his earliest to his latest years, is one of great value, not merely to his own sect, the Baptists, but to all who can appreciate originality of character and thought. Foster was a hard, determined, patient thinker, gifted with much imagination, and impressing on every thing he wrote the invincible honesty of his character. His correspondence reveals to us the inmost recesses of his mind and disposition, and constitutes a kind of psychological autobiography, replete with materials of interest and instruction. The separate thoughts scattered over these volumes would alone be sufficient to reward abundantly the trouble of its perusal. One of the strongest peculiarities of genius, Foster says in one place, “is the power of lighting its own fire.” Of a soft and pensive evening, he remarks—“It is as if the soul of Eloisa pervaded all the air.” Shakspeare, he observes, had perceptions of every kind; “he could think every way. His mind might be compared to that monster the prophet saw in his vision, which had eyes all over.” Again he says—“Lord Chatham did not reason; he struck, as by intuition, directly on the results of reasoning; as a cannon-shot strikes the mark without your seeing its course through the air as it moves towards its object.” When shown a piece of ornamental worsted-work, with a great deal of red in it, he said “it was red with the blood of murdered time.” The volumes are full of thoughts and observations equally striking and pointed.