Brydone the Tourist's Birth-place (Vol. vii., p. 108.).—According to Chambers's Lives of Scotsmen, vol. i. p. 384., 1832, Brydone was the son of a clergyman in the neighbourhood of Dumbarton, where he was born in the year 1741. When he came to England, he was engaged as travelling preceptor by Mr. Beckford, to whom his Tour through Sicily and Malta is addressed. In a copy of this work, now before me, I find the following remarks written in pencil:
"These travels are written in a very plausible style, but little dependence is to be placed upon their veracity. Brydone never was on the summit of Ætna, although he describes the prospect from it in such glowing colours."
It is right to add, that the writer of these remarks was long a resident in Italy, and in constant habits of intercourse with the most distinguished scholars of that country.
J. Macray.
Oxford.
Miscellaneous.
NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.
The second volume of Murray's British Classics, which is also the second of Mr. Cunningham's edition of The Works of Oliver Goldsmith, fully justifies all we said in commendation of its predecessor. It contains Goldsmith's Enquiry into the State of Polite Literature in Europe, and his admirable series of letters, entitled The Citizen of the World. Mr. Cunningham tells us that "he has been careful to mark all Goldsmith's own notes with his name;" his predecessors having in some instances adopted them as their own, and in others omitted them altogether, although they are at times curiously illustrative of the text. We are glad to see that Mr. Murray announces a new edition, revised and greatly enlarged, of Mr. Foster's valuable Life of Goldsmith, uniform with the present collection of Goldsmith's writings.
Memorials of the Canynges Family and their Times; Westbury College, Redcliffe Church, and Chatterton, by George Pryce, is the somewhat abbreviated title of a goodly octavo volume, on which Mr. Pryce has bestowed great industry and research, and by which he hopes to clear away the mists of error which have overshadowed the story of the Canynges family during the Middle Ages, and to show their connexion with the erection or restoration of Westbury College and Redcliff Church. As Mr. Pryce has some few inedited memoranda relating to Chatterton, he has done well to incorporate them in a volume dedicated in some measure to the history of Bristol's "Merchant Prince."