With music; and when sweeter air
Than common breathes from briar-rose bowers,
Methinks, the Rainbow hath touched there."
[We have reason to believe that the idea was suggested to Mr. Snow neither from Bacon's Sylva, nor from any of our English poets, but from a Greek writer after the Christian era, referred to by Coleridge in his Table Talk.]
Miscellaneous.
NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC.
Mr. Hepworth Dixon, who is already favourably known as the author of a Life of Howard, has just published William Penn, an Historical Biography. It is unquestionably a book of considerable talent; and even those who may be most inclined to dissent from the
author's views of the political principles of the Quakers (and we suspect many of the Quakers themselves will be found among that number), will admit that in treating him not as a mere Quaker, as preceding biographers had been too much disposed to do, but as "a great English historical character—the champion of the Jury Laws—the joint leader, with Algernon Sidney, of the Commonwealth men—the royal councillor of 1684-8—the courageous defender of Free Thought—the founder of Pennsylvania"—Mr. Dixon has succeeded in the task which he had proposed to himself, namely, that of transforming William Penn "from a myth into a man." His vindication of this great man from what he designates "The Macaulay Charges" would not, however, have lost one iota of its efficiency, had it been couched in somewhat more measured terms.
Mr. Murray announces The Grenville Papers; being the Private Correspondence of Richard Grenville Earl Temple, his brother George Grenville, their Friends and Contemporaries, as in the press. It will contain some letters from Junius, and Mr. Grenville's Diary, particularly during his premiership, from 1763 to 1765. The fifth and sixth volumes of Lord Mahon's History of England from the Peace of Utrecht are also at press.