Many very correct writers are very poor authors, and there are abundance of good books with imperfect rhetoric; yet we have a right to ask some attention to the details of style in a literary critic. Professor Henry Reed has a delicate appreciation in poetry, but his remarks are nearly always marred by verbal infelicities incompatible with a knowledge of literary art. Thus, within a few pages of his Memoir of Gray, just published, he says of Jacob Bryant, who has been dead a century, that "he has recorded;" that "Gray retained a high admiration of Dryden's poetry, as was strongly expressed," &c.; that an ode published in 1747, "being the first publication of his English verse" (meaning his first publication in English verse); that Gray could not "break through the circumspection of so contracted a system of metaphysics as that of Locke's;" that "it is apparent from what Gray has done" (as if Gray were now living, or present), &c. &c. &c. &c. &c., all through every thing he publishes. Such things in a professor of mathematics would attract no attention, but they will be observed in a "Professor of English Literature."
Mr. Bancroft is not, as we were led by some newspaper to state in the International, engaged in printing his History of the Revolution; and when he does give it to the press, it is by no means likely that he will have to leave New-York to find a publisher for it. The History of the Colonization of America—introductory to the History of the United States—has secured for Mr. Bancroft a place among the greatest historians; he has now the assurance that he is writing for other ages; and he will not endanger his fame, nor fail of the utmost perfection in his work, for any needless haste. This second part of his History will probably occupy five volumes; and although the story has been written by many hands, with more or less fulness and various degrees of justice, Mr. Bancroft will have studied it from beginning to end in the original materials, of which his collection is by far the best that has ever been made. If upon this field any one successfully competes with him for the historic wreath, he must come after him, and be guided by his light.
Henry R. Schoolcraft, LL. D., is occupied, as his official duties permit, in the composition of memoirs of his long and honorably distinguished life. His great work upon the History and Condition of the Indians, now in press, and to be published in some half-dozen splendid quarto volumes by Lippencott, Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia, will contain the fruits of his observations in that department which he has made so peculiarly his own, and upon which he will always be the chief and highest authority; but his personal adventures, and his reminiscences of his contemporaries, will form the subject of this additional performance.
Dr. Samuel Johnson, the father of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and the first President of King's College, now Columbia College, in New-York, was one of the most interesting characters in our social history. His abilities, learning, activity, and influence, entitle him to be ranked in the class of Franklin (who was his friend and correspondent, and who printed, at his press in Philadelphia, several of his works), as a promoter of the highest civilization in the colonies. Except the Memoirs of Franklin, we have hitherto had no more attractive specimen of biography than the book known as Dr. Chandler's Life of Dr. Johnson. Franklin's Memoirs, it is well known, never came before the public in the form in which they were written, until a few years ago, and it has lately been discovered that Dr. Johnson's had suffered a similar disadvantage. Dr. Johnson amused himself in his old age by writing recollections of his life and times, which, after his death, were placed in the hands of Dr. Chandler, who changed them from the first to the third person, omitted many particulars which he did not deem it expedient to publish, and added others which the modesty of Dr. Johnson had not allowed him to write. The book thus made by Dr. Chandler was printed by his son-in-law, the late Bishop Hobart, who probably was not aware of its origin. But Dr. Johnson's MS. has now been discovered, and it will immediately be given to the public, under the supervision of the Rev. Mr. Pitkin, of Connecticut, who is adding to it many notes and illustrative documents. It is very much to be regretted that so little of the extensive correspondence of Dr. Johnson with the chief persons of his time in the literary and the religious world abroad, has been preserved; but the book will contain numerous letters by his more eminent contemporaries which have not appeared elsewhere.
Somebody has made the "discovery" that General Charles Lee, of the revolutionary army, was not unwilling to be considered the author of "Junius;" and two or three of our contemporaries have been busy with the subject of the internal and other evidence in the case. These critics are about as wise as the editor of an evening paper who published one of the old Washington forgeries, lately, as an important historical document. It was "characteristic," that the chief wrote so familiarly to his wife of affairs! In the same way, the history of the Book of Mormon (originally composed as a religious novel by the Rev. Solomon Spaulding), appears as a curious and altogether new exposure! We shall not be surprised if the same journals advise us that Walter Scott wrote the Waverley Novels.