REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

Characteristics of Literature. Illustrated by the Genius of Distinguished Men. By Henry T. Tuckerman. Phila.: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1 vol. 12mo.

Mr. Tuckerman has written many interesting books, but we think the present volume is his most attractive if not his best production. It is characterized by his usual refinement of analysis, wealth of illustration, felicity of allusion, and mellow richness of style, while in the range it evinces over widely varied provinces of thought and character, it indicates more versatility than any of his other compositions. The volume includes a discussion and representation of eleven departments of literature, through a searching examination of as many authors, each of whom is taken as the exponent of a class. Thus Channing stands for the Moralist, Sir Thomas Browne for the Philosopher, Swift for the Wit, Shenstone for the Dillettante, Charles Lamb for the Humorist, and Macaulay for the Historian. The selection of men to illustrate the subjects is, of course, not free from cavil. We should say that Burke was not exactly the man to stand as an expression of the Rhetorician, for his rhetoric, though matchless of its kind, is secondary to his philosophy. He appears to us, even as analyzed by Mr. Tuckerman, in the character of a profound, vigorous and vital thinker, and is no more a rhetorician, in any exclusive sense of the term, than Bacon, Hooker, Taylor, or even Milton. Where style is the incarnation of thought, the visible image of the mind that employs it—and this is its nature in all the greatest authors—the word rhetoric is hardly applicable to it. Macaulay is more emphatically the rhetorician than Burke.

Select Comedies; Translated from the Italian of Goldoni, Giraud and Nota. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

A volume like the present, giving the English reader a good idea of the spirit and form of Italian comedy, has long been wanted, and we have little doubt that it will be successful. To the lover of the English drama the plays may seem to lack solid character and unctuous humor; but they are still distinguished by a fertility in the invention of ludicrous incidents and positions, and a mischievous quick-footed spirit of intrigue, that no person with a sense of the comic can read them without exhilaration. The translations are, we believe, from an American pen, and appear to be well executed. Six complete comedies are given, and the translator has been fortunate in his selections both in respect to merit and variety. The two comedies of Goldoni are alone richly worth the price of the book.