Dr. Hagberg, a professor at the University of Upsal, has just published at Stockholm a version of the complete works of Shakspeare, the first ever made in the Swedish language. It is in twelve thick octavo volumes. The Shaksperian Society of London having received a presentation copy of this translation, has returned a vote of thanks to Dr. Hagberg, accompanied by forty volumes of the Society's publications, all relating to the great dramatist and the state of dramatic art in his time.
Dunlop's History of Fiction has been translated into German by Professor Liebrecht of Liege, and enlarged so as to be much more complete than the original. The version bears the title of Geschichte der Prosadichtung oder, Geschichte der Romane, Novellen und Mährchen (History of Prose Poetry, or History of Romances, Novels and Traditional Tales). It gives a complete account of the most prominent fictions from the Greek romances down to the present day, and is quite as valuable for those who like to take their novels condensed, as for those who make a historical study of literature.
Holtei, the German poet, has published a four-volume novel, called Die Vagabunden (The Vagabonds). It is a curious and successful book. It treats of the various classes that get their living by amusing others, not merely of theatrical and musical artists, but of circus-riders, ventriloquists, jugglers, rope-dancers, puppet-showmen, &c. Indeed, actors and musicians are only introduced casually, while the lower classes, if we may so call them, of wandering artists, make up the book; and they make it up not in the form of caricatures or exaggerations, but as genuine living characters, with the faults and virtues that really belong to men of their respective professions The story is a good one, and is varied with all sorts of strange adventures.
In poetry we observe the attractive title of The Æolian Harp of the World's Poetry, a collection of poems of all countries and ages, "dedicated to German ladies and maidens," by Ferd. Schmidt. Also by the same collector, a Household Treasury of the most beautiful Ballads, Romances, and Poetic Legends of all Times and Nations; by Bruno Lindner, Four Tales, and from the Countess Agnes Schwerin, a new edition of What I heard from the bird. Were we confident that the Countess were intimately familiar with English poetry, we should feel half inclined to accuse her of having taken this title from
"High diddle ding, I heard a bird sing."
G. Puslitz has "thrown forth," as Bacchus threw the wreath of Ariadne, a "garland of Stories," entitled What the Forest Tells. Whether, like the wreath alluded to, it will reach the stars, we must leave our readers or his to decide.
In Science, we observe the publication of a piece of eccentric nonsense such as emanates at the present day only from a weak brother in Germany, or occasionally from a would-be original in New England. The work to which we refer is the Natur und Geist (or Nature and Spirit) of Dr. Johann Riohers. In the second volume he attempts to utterly overwhelm, confound, and destroy Newton's Theory of Attraction, by such an argument as the following. "Let any man jump from a height, in descending he feels no attraction to the Earth. How hasty and absurd therefore is it to attribute the movement in question to such an attraction."
A new collection of German Domestic Legends (Haus Mährchen) has been published at Leipzig, by J.W. Wolf, a distinguished German philologist. His Legends closely resemble those collected by Grimm, and, like them, are curious and instructive. He obtained them, one from a Gipsey, others from peasants in the mountain districts, and others from some companies of Hessian soldiers. He remarks that many such ancient legends are yet floating about among the German people, and that they ought to be collected before they are lost.
Zend Avesta, or On the things of Heaven and the World beyond the Grave, is the title of a new book in three volumes just published at Leipzig, in German, of course, by Gustav Theodor Fechnor. The author attempts to prove the possibility, if not the certainty, of a future life of the individual after death. His demonstrations are drawn from the analogies of the natural world. He exhibits a wide acquaintance with nature and with literature, but is not thought to have made any positive additions to psychological science.
Those who are conversant with the curiosities of the Middle Ages, and have read the entertaining history of "Ye Nigromancer Virgilius," in which the Mantuan bard lives no longer in the magic of song, but that of literal sorcery, will peruse with pleasure the Virgil's Fortleben im Mittelalter, or The Life of Virgil continued in the Middle Ages, by G. Rappert. Of all the wild romantic legends which the romantic time brought forth, none surpass in singularity and interest this singular narration.