The department of MSS. in the British Museum has been lately enriched with a document of peculiar interest to English literature—namely, the original covenant of indenture between John Milton, gent., and Samuel Symons, printer, for the sale and publication of Paradise Lost, dated the 27th of April, 1667. By the terms of agreement, Milton was to receive £5 at once, and an additional £5 after the sale of 1300 copies of each of the first, the second, and the third "impressions" or editions—making in all the sum of £20 to be received for the copy of the work and the sale of 3900 copies.
The Athenæum thus notices the death of a late traveler in this country. "The world of literature has to mourn the untimely closing of a career full of promise—and which, short as it has been, was not without the illustration of performance. Mr. Alexander Mackay, known to our readers as the author of 'The Western World,' has been snatched from life at the early age of thirty-two. Besides the work which bears his name before the world, Mr. Mackay had already performed much of that kind of labor which, known for the time only to the scientific few, lays the ground for future publicity and distinction. Connected as a special correspondent with the Morning Chronicle he had been employed by that journal in those collections of facts and figures on the aggregate and comparison of which many of the great social and statist questions of the day are made to depend. In 1850 Mr. Mackay was commissioned by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to visit India for the purpose of ascertaining by minute inquiries on the spot what obstacles exist to prevent an ample supply of good cotton being obtained from its fields, and devising the means of extending the growth of that important plant in our Eastern empire."
Granier de Cassagnac, long known to France as an impudent, unveracious, reckless journalist and critic, has published some critical Essays, written in his obscurer days. He calls them Œuvres Litéraires. The volume contains articles on Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Lacordaire, Corneille, Racine, Dumas, Hugo, &c.
The readers of the Débats will remember a series of violent, bigoted, conceited, but not unimportant articles in the feuilleton, signed Cuvillier Fleury, devoted principally to the men and books of the Revolutions of '89 and '48. Written with asperity and passion, they have the force and vivacity of passion, although their intense conceit and personality very much abates the reader's pleasure. M. Fleury has collected them in two volumes, under the title, Portraits Politiques et Révolutionnaires. Politicians will be attracted toward the articles on Louis-Philippe, Guizot, the Duchess of Orleans, the Revolution of 1848, &c.; men of letters will turn to the articles on Lamartine, Sue, Louis Blanc, Daniel Stern, Proudhon, and Victor Hugo, or to those on Rousseau, St. Just, Barère, and Camille Desmoulins.
Baron de Walkaener, Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, of Paris, died April 27. In addition to eminence in what the French call the Moral and Political Sciences, he was a very laborious homme de lettres, and has given to the world interesting biographies of La Fontaine and other French writers, together with correct editions of their works. He was a member of the Institute, and was one of the principals of the Bibliothèque Nationale.