The work is elegantly printed, and will, we hope, find a large class of readers. It should be continued in the manner with which it has been commenced, and we can hardly believe that annals, relating to a country so essentially romantic as Spain, and written by one whose whole soul is penetrated by her nation’s spirit, should not be received with marked popular approbation.
The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith. Including a variety of Pieces now first collected. By James Prior. In Four Volumes. New York: Geo. P. Putnam, Vols. 1 and 2, 12mo.
Among the many good things which the accomplished and enterprising publisher of this work has done for the cause of classical English literature in the United States, the present cheap and elegant edition of Goldsmith ranks with the first. It is the only American edition which contains the new matter which Prior has collected. The first volume alone has a sufficiently large number of new essays to make every lover of Goldsmith procure the edition.
Goldsmith is so universal a favorite, and the leading characteristics of his genius are so impressed on the public mind, that it would be useless here to speak of his sly, searching and genial humor, his shrewd and accurate observation, the generosity of his sympathies, the wealth of his fancy, and the lucid simplicity and sweet fascination of his style. Let the reader peruse the present edition in connection with Irving’s charming biography of Goldsmith, and we will guarantee that the works and life of the subject will be a possession to his imagination forever.
The Poets and Poetry of America to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century. By Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Tenth Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1 vol. 8vo.
The popular estimate of this work is indicated by its passing through nine large editions in seven years. The present, which is the tenth edition, is almost a new book. The editor has corrected faults of judgment and selection, which necessarily occurred in the first edition, and had availed himself of the benefit of the criticisms, friendly and unfriendly, which it called forth.
The poetical literature of the country has also grown considerably during the last seven years, and Mr. Griswold has therefore added many exquisite pieces of Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell and Poe—excluded some poems, and put better ones by the same authors in their place—and introduced into the body of the book liberal selections from the new poets, Palmer, Lunt, Hoyt, Clarke, Parsons, Cooke, Fields, Wallace, Hirst, Mathews, Taylor, Boker, Read, Legare and Butler, are among the additions. The book, in its present form, gives a fair idea of American verse in all its varieties of individuality and style. It is still open to objections, and is doubtless capable of further improvement; but we think that the editor has more to fear from the anger of poets who suffer from the austerity of his taste, than from that of readers who sometimes suffer from its exceeding tolerance. As a whole, the book is very attractive, and we wish it another seven years of success, and a passage into edition twentieth.