We doubt whether any living Englishman is capable of surpassing Sir Bulwer Lytton's version of the Ballads of Schiller, but Mr. Edgar Alfred Bowring, a son of the well-known Dr. Bowring who has published translations from so many languages, has just published a volume entitled The Poems of Schiller complete, including all his early Suppressed Pieces, attempted in English. The word "complete" expresses its difference from the many Schillers in English that have previously appeared. An Anthology edited by Schiller in 1782, when he had just commenced his career, contains several poems which the critics recognize as his. This remained unknown, however, except as a literary curiosity, till a few months ago; and several of the poems had been omitted in all the collections of Schiller's works. But the republication of the Anthology has brought to light the suppressed poems (in number twenty-eight, comprising nearly twelve hundred verses), and those are translated for the first time by Mr. Bowring, whose versions are much commended.
Among the new books of English verse, some of the most noticeable are The Fair Island, in Six Cantos, by Edmund Peel: in the Spenserian measure, with passages of fair description; Ballad Romances, by R. H. Horne, author of "Orion," &c.—a book containing genuine poetry; The Reign of Avarice, an allegorical satire, in four cantos; Philosophy in the Fens, in the style of Peter Pindar; and Marican, a Chilian tale, by Henry Inglis.
Warren, the author of "Ten Thousand a Year," has just published a new novel under the title of The Lily and the Bee, a Romance of the Crystal Palace. The name savors of the huckster, and we shall look for a more melancholy failure than his last previous performance.
Mr. Levi Woodbury's Miscellaneous Writings, Addresses, and Judicial Opinions, will be published in four octavo volumes, by Little & Brown, of Boston.
The North American Review for the July quarter is in many respects characteristic. Six months after every Review published in Great Britain had had its paper on Southey, and when the subject is quite worn out, the North American furnishes us with a leading article upon it, in which there is neither an original thought nor a new combination of thoughts that are old. Colton's Public Economy gives a title to an article, in which the book is treated superciliously, and some ideas by Henry C. Carey are presented as the original speculations of the reviewer. It is deserving of remark that the Past and Present, and more recent works of Mr. Carey, which among thinking men throughout the world have commanded more attention than any other writings in political philosophy during the last five years, have never been even referred to in this periodical, which arrogates to itself the leadership of American literature. The eighth article of the number is on the Unity of the Human Race, and considering the place it occupies in the North American Review, for July, 1851, it is contemptible. It is based on five publications made in England previous to 1847, and ignores all the research and discussion since that time, notwithstanding the facts that the subject never was so amply, so profoundly, or so luminously discussed as during the last year—that the very writers referred to in the article have for the chief part published their most important treatises upon it since 1847—that within six months its literature has received large accessions in France, Germany, and Italy,—and that in our own country, of whose intellectual advancement this Review is bound to give some sort of an index, the four years since Latham's "Present State and Recent Progress of Ethnological Philosophy" appeared, have furnished important works by Albert Gallatin, Mr. Hale of the Exploring Expedition, the Rev. Dr. Bachman, the Rev. Dr. Smyth, and several others, all of which should have been considered in any new, especially in any American resume of the discussion. Johnston's Notes on North America is treated with a spleen excited by the author's refusal to recognize the greatness assumed for certain persons connected with Harvard College, and Mr. Bowen is weak enough to say, or to permit a contributor to say, "we understand(!) Mr. Johnston has a high reputation," &c. Pish! And what does the reader suppose is the theme—the fresh, before unheard-of theme—of another paper? what new star, in the heaven of mind, demanded most the exploration and illustration of the North American Review, for this July quarter, in 1851? The best guesser of riddles would not in fifty years hit upon Mr. Gilfillan's book of rigmarole entitled The Bards of the Bible, but this performance, which had been criticised in every other quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily, in the English language, that would descend to it, crowds out the subjects of "great pith and moment" upon which a periodical of such claims should have spoken with wise authority.
Our own country is full of suggestive topics for thoughtful, earnest, and learned men, and it is fit that the closet should send out its instruction to calm the turbulence awakened by tempests from the rostrum—that affairs should be subjected to the criticism of experience, and that what is new in discovery, in opinion, or in suggestion, should have quick and popular recognition and justice. We need—we must have—for this purpose a powerful and really national Review, to reflect and guide the life and aspirations of the country.