excellence, another of another. Achilles wins the victory, and Homer immortalizes it: we bestow the laurel-crown on both. In virtue of a genius such as modern times have only seen equaled once or twice, Goethe deserves the epithet of great; unless we believe a great genius can belong to a small mind. Nor is it in virtue of genius alone that he deserves the name. Merck said of him, that what he lived was more beautiful than what he wrote; and his life, amid all its weaknesses and all its errors, presents a picture of a certain grandeur of soul which cannot be contemplated unmoved. I shall make no attempt to conceal his faults. Let them be dealt with as harshly as severest justice may dictate, they will not eclipse the central light which shines throughout his life. He was great, if only in large-mindedness--a magnanimity which admitted no trace of envy, of pettiness, of ignoble feeling, to stain or to distort his thoughts. He was great, if only in his lovingness, sympathy, benevolence. He was great, if only in his gigantic activity. He was great, if only in selfmastery, which subdued rebellious impulses into the direct path prescribed by his will and reason. This man, we may say, became morally great, by being in his own age what in some other ages many might have been a genuine man. His grand excellency was this, that he was genuine. As his primary faculty-the foundation of all others-was intellect, depth, and force of vision, so his primary virtue was justice was the courage to be just. A giant's strength we admired in him; yet strength ennobled into softest mildness. The greatest of hearts was also the bravest -fearless, unwearied, peacefully invincible.'*

"The following pages will, it is hoped, furnish evidence for such a judgment, and help to dissipate the many misconstructions which darken the glory of the life of Germany's greatest son."

Especially grateful are we to Mr. Lewes for the preeminence which he has given to the youth of Goethe. In this biography we see the fiery, magnificent Apollo of Strasburg as distinctly as the solemn Jupiter of Weimar. When one reflects how exclusively we have been familiarized heretofore with Goethe, as he appeared in his age, with the stately prime minister, the starred and white-cravatted excellency, it is less surprising that we should have done the great heart of the poet so much injustice.

Who could look on Schwanthaler's venerable magnate, as he stands there in the Goethe-platz of Frankfort, and fancy that

Titan in nankeens capable of passionate excesses or youthful indiscretion?

The criticisms upon Goethe's works, which Mr. Lewes has scattered through his book, are always worthy of attentionthoughtful, clearly stated, suggestive. The style of the book is attractive. Sometimes, indeed, the journalist is betrayed by a dash of flippancy or a discursive episode; but the reader is taken up at the first page, and carried cleverly along to the last. If he knew Goethe before, he will find the journey delightful; if he did not, he will find it also astonishing.

We have now only to thank Messrs. Ticknor & Fields for giving it to us so speedily and in so handsome a form, and to recommend it cordially to our readers. We are sorry, however, to see that Mr. Lewes has been misled into crediting Mr. John Oxenford with a translation of Goethe's Dichtung and Wahrheit, which Mr. John Oxenford never made. The translation which appeared with his name, in London, was a deliberate piracy, perpetrated upon Mr. Parke Godwin and Mr. Dana, of this city.

-The issue of the sixteenth edition of Dr. GRISWOLD'S Poets and Poetry of America is an illustration of the interest taken by our reading community in the history of American literature, as well as of the substantial merits of the work. Dr. Griswold is an indefatigable literary mouser. On all points of gossip concerning books and book-makers, he is more extensively informed than most men. He has an innate vocation for the pursuit, with which his name is identified. His taste is certainly not immaculate, but then he makes no pretensions to literary infallibility. He is, sometimes, inaccurate in details, but his errors are usually of trifling consequence; and the main features of his statements will, for the most part, bear examination. He, perhaps, indulges too much in criticism -for the purpose of his work is historical, not critical-and the majority of his readers would give more for a page of facts than for a volume of opinions. Still, many of his comments are valuable, and, except in the rare instances which betray a tinge of personal prejudice, are considerate and discriminating. Too much praise can scarcely be accorded to Dr. Griswold

for his energy and perseverance as a pioneer. The collective literature of every country is a wilderness, and a bold spirit and robust arm are needed to penetrate its tangled mazes. Dr. Griswold, indeed, has had predecessors in his work, like Kettell, Cheever, Bryant, and Keese; but still a vast field was left for his researches, and he has entered it with resolution and success. the present edition, many new names have been introduced; several of the articles entirely re-written and numerous attractive specimens give from our latest poets.

In

-REED's Lectures on English History. We had occasion to commend the lectures of the late Professor REED, on English literature, for their fine scholarship and amiable spirit; and we discover the same qualities in the present volume, with some others of a higher order. It was scarcely possible to say anything original on a theme so worn as that of the English writers; and all that the reader had a right to expect was, a genial appreciation and a methodical treatment of the subject. These Mr. Reed gave. But, in the work before us, he has struck out in a somewhat new pathtreating English history not in itself, nor in what are usually called the historical relations, but as it has been illustrated by the genius of Shakespeare; and treating it with much philosophical discernment and skill. Mr. Reed's fundamental idea is, that history is interpreted by the imagination as well as by the reason; and that while poetry has a precious power of its own, for the preservation of historic truthreviving the past so as to make it imperishable-it has also a clarifying power, which divests that truth of much of the hetero geneous and impure matter, mingled with its actual contents. This thought he defends in the opening lecture, with remarkable clearness, and even beauty of illustration; and then, in the following lectures, applies it to the ages dramatized by Shakespeare. Of the ten plays, founded upon the chronicles of his country, by Shakespeare, one relating to King John is a kind of prologue; and another-the Henry VIII-a kind of epilogue. But the other eight are parts of one continuous drama, of which the subject is the fall of the Plantaganet dynasty, and the time, nearly the whole fifteenth century, The period embraces the reigns of the second and third Richards; the fourth, fifth, and sixth

Henrys, and the fourth and fifth Edwardsbeginning with the accession of the boy Richard, and-after a thousand civic conflicts and vicissitudes-ending in the catastrophe of Bosworth Field. The eight plays in which this stupendous historical theme is treated, are, as Professor Reed says, so closely interwoven with each other, that they may be regarded as the eight acts of one grand tragedy: at the same time, each play is complete in itself; but it is in contemplating the scenes as a whole that we see the real grandeur, the awful might and magnitude of the genius, which could worthily handle so immense a theme. We are commonly so much impressed by the merits of Shakespeare's more imaginative plays, that we are apt to lose sight of the greatness of this historical series; and it is only when they are brought together as a unity-as in these lectures of Professor Reed-that we feel how wonderful they are. It is needless for us to add, that in his generalizations and criticisms, Professor Reed evinces careful historical reading, fine taste, a noble and sweet humanity, and an ardent love of his topics. We could have wished that his mind had been less imbued with Wordsworth's poetry (which is quoted whenever a poetical quotation is made), not because we dislike that poetry, but because the frequency of its occurrence takes away the sense of variety, which it is one object of a quotation to give, and leads to a suspicion (unjust in this case, we believe,) of a narrow or partial culture on the part of the author. Wordsworth's poetry contains a rich store of profound thought and striking imagery; but "great poets lived before William Wordsworth." The proof reading of the volume has not been as careful as its neatness, in other typographical respects, deserved.

-Mrs. SARAH J. HALE proposes to edit a Library of Standard Letters, comprising selections from the correspondence of eminent men and women. The first volume is before us, and contains the letters of Mme. de Sévigné. Mrs. Hale has arranged these letters, not according to the dates, but according to their addresses, throwing all the letters to one person into one series. We cannot think this plan an improvement, if the object of the work be to make the reader acquainted with Madame de Sévigné. It is very instructive to see the different

faces which a woman of genius presents, at the same time, to her various friends.

The letters are translated as well as untranslatable letters can be, but the notes are dreary. The class of readers for whom these books are intended can hardly be much edified by the information, that the "Princess d'Harcourt" was the "daughter of Charles de Brancas." Nor can we think that Mme. de Sévigné is quite a model, in private life, of Christian conduct, for modern young ladies. Still Mrs. Hale's idea is a good one; and if we are not mistaken in the belief, that the taste for epistolary literature is not, and never can be a popular one, the series she proposes will be successful.

-We have to thank the Messrs. Harper for another edition of that most delightful of books, TALFOURD'S Life and Works of Charles Lamb. There are persons, we are told, and these well informed, who "know not Lamb." Are such persons to be pitied, or to be envied? to be pitied for their long exile from the coziest nook of all the literary world; or to be envied for the joy which shall be theirs when they enter it? How entertaining these Editorial Notes would be, could we extract into them balf a dozen pages at random, from these two stout volumes! But this may not be-so reader, go buy the stout volumes, and learn to think better of life and of man.

In this new edition, the publishers have incorporated those last memorials of Lamb which the pious affection of Talfourd gave to the world a few years since-those memorials which make us reverence a hero in the man, whom we had loved before as a friend. Pharisees! whose lifted brows and hands could never fall for thinking of Lamb's one frailty, "consider now his career, and ask yourselves if the annals of self-sacrifice can show anything, in human action and endurance, more lovely than its self-devotion exhibits."

-From the Harpers, also, we have two new volumes of their Classical Library. Mr. Watson's translation of Xenophon's Anabasis and Memorabilia is to be commended for its fidelity rather than for its elegance. It is admirably adapted for a college "pony;" but the Anabasis, especially, is such an interesting narrative, that it deserved a more attractive English dress. Mr. Ainsworth's Geographical Commentary is subjoined, and is a valuable addition.

Mr. C. R. Edmonds has collected in one volume the moral writings of Cicero, to which he has appended notes, designed to exhibit a comparative view of the opinions of Cicero, and those of modern moralists. This is an excellent notion, and has been quite well carried out. The translation is curious in one respect. It so closely follows (at least in the De Officiis) Cicero's idioms, that Cicero's imitation of the Greek thought and style is still more apparent in this English version than in his own original Latin.

-Three novels engage our attention. We give the precedence to the best of them. This is, Caste, a Story of Republican Equality, by SYDNEY A. STORY, Jr. The collocation of these two "Storys" on the title-page indicates, at once, the sharpest criticism we have to make on this book. It is not elegantly, nor always correctly written, and the real interest of the narrative is impaired by the deficiencies of the author's style. Moreover, he has given a bad name to a good book. "Caste" suggests Uncle Tom, and Ida May, and the multitude of inferior books called into being by the success of these; and every sensible man recoils at such a suggestion. But "Caste" is neither an imitation nor a repetition, nor a lecture in disguise. It is a true novel, into which the element of slavery enters only as one spring of interest and of passion. The story is well managed, and, though not probable, comes with in the limits of possibility and the legitimate domain of the novelist. As a rebuke of the vile prejudice against color, which vulgarizes the manners and degrades the minds of so many Americans, "Caste" cannot be too highly praised. It is written with force, and feeling, and fire.

-Lily, by the authoress of the "Busy Moments of an Idle Woman," is a good specimen of a bad class. The plot of the novel is sketchy and vague-the characters clear in description, shadowy in development-the dialogue pointed, lively, and clever. But one cannot help recognizing, in the leading personages, certain individuals well known in southern and northern society, and we cannot, with a good conscience, congratulate the authoress on her skillful portraiture of scenes that ought not to have been painted, and of persons who probably don't choose to see their photographs in all the shops. The book

yields such an aroma of scandal, that we beg leave to suggest an addition to the title. Let it be called, in the second edition, the "Tiger-Lily."

-Mr. WooD'S Modern Pilgrims is hardly a novel. It is still less a romance. It is, in fact, a nondescript book—Mr.Wood having taken the name of old John Bunyan in vain, for his own purposes. What those purposes are, all of his readers perhaps will not discover. So far as we can find them out, they are to find fault with everybody, and to criticise everything. The criticisms of the author are often superficial, and always extravagant; while his frame-work of allegory is ill-constructed, bare, and unattractive. On the whole, Mr. Wood has come as far short of Bunyan, in this instance, as he fell behind Chamisso in his former work, "Peter Schlemihl in America."

--The Widow Bedott Papers is a collection of popular sketches of rural life and rural people in New England, by a lady. The author makes unmerciful use of the New England peculiarities of character and language, and seems to have aimed at doing for the social world of Yankeedom what Jack Downing did for the political. The book was written by Mrs. B. W. Whicher, who is now no more. And Mrs. Alice B. Neal has prefaced the book with a graceful and interesting memoir. She praises the virtues of Mrs. Whicher as warmly as her talents; and the tone of the "Bedott Papers" is, certainly, creditable to the feelings and the impulses of the writer.

--Mrs. WIRT (the widow of the distinguished attorney-general) has carefully and lovingly prepared a large quarto, entitled Flora's Dictionary. It is, at once, a course of botany, a complete flower letterwriter, and a dictionary of quotations. It will, undoubtedly, be a popular book; for it is profusely illustrated--profusely and showily, though not always in the best

taste.

-An enterprising young firm in Boston, who signalized themselves a short time since by disinterring De Quincy's "Klosterheim," in spite of the author's expressed desire that the book should be left in its quiet grave, have now done themselves more credit, and the public more service, by issuing a handsome edition of JOHN STERLING'S fascinating tale of the Onyx Ring. Veteran readers of Blackwood will

not need to be reminded of the power, the beauty, and the subtle pathos which pervade that singular romance. The brilliant and versatile genius of Sterling, which exercised a pervasive rather than a perceptible influence upon the English literature of the times, is most adequately embodied, perhaps, in this creation. "One builds Cyclopean walls; another fashions marble carvings." It is something, also, to have wrought a magic ring, the mystic charm of which will test the consciousness of men for several generations yet to come. To the romance is prefixed a brief, candid, and intelligible memoir of Sterling, by Charles Hale.

-MR. DUGANNE is one of the greatest of American poets. This we say, with fear and trembling, on the authority of Mr. Duganne himself; for the style of Duganne's notes upon Duganne has impressed us with a belief that he will take the life of anybody who questions the perfection of his genius.

Mr. Duganne is an "Iron Man," we are informed, and plays upon an "Iron Harp" -whether it is a "harp of a thousand strings," or merely a Jew's harp, we don't pretend to know. It is enough that he plays so deftly as to have persuaded Mr. James Lesley, of Ironcroft," to publish his resonant strains in a gorgeous octavo, on very handsome paper.

Mr. Duganre bangs the anvil and blows the trumpet-lauds labor and incites to battle-through some four hundred pages. He is a devotee of that "philanthropy" which an Eastern professor gravely defined as" the worst passion of our nature;" and, in the fervor of his emotions, not seldom soars above the restraints of rhyme and the narrow limits of versification. This, of course, is no affair of ours; and Mr. Duganne might have misused metre to the end of his days, unmolested by us, had he not seen fit to abuse almost every respectable writer in America. When we glanced at Mr. Duganne's portrait prefixed to this volume, we thought him rather an amiablelooking man. In private life he may be all that his face would indicate, but he is a terrible fellow in print. Not contented with assailing all his literary brethren, in one of the most ineffectual and clumsy satires ever composed, he has fallen upon them again, in a series of notes à la Tom Moore, in the course of which he has the

unspeakable audacity to lift up the heel against our own sovereign lady, "Maga," herself!

-Mr. BAYARD TAYLOR has nothing to do with "Iron Men" or "Iron Harps." He is an artist, and a man of feeling, and in the handsome volume entitled Poems of Home and Travel, he gives us a careful selection from his works. Mr. Taylor is a thoughtful student of metre. How delicately true, for instance, is the key of that charming poem, "The Wayside Dream;" how dreary the music of the "Storm Lines," in which the poet has ventured upon an experiment and achieved a success. Mr. Taylor's domain lies in the realm of experience, rather than in that of speculation. His fine poem of the "Summer Camp" would have been finer than it is, had he not happened to think of the "Lotus-Eaters." If Mr. Taylor will compare the development of his "Pard and the Soldier" with that of the morbid and horrible story by which it was suggested, we think he will apprehend, fully, the criticism we have hinted here. For the praise we would imply, the reader will find that in the response of his feelings to such strains as those the poet sang "In Italy."

But, why do we go so far back? The judicious readers of our pages have not yet forgotten the rhythm of the "Wind and the Sea," or the stately poem of the "Mariners." These they will recover in the new volume, and other "Sunken Treasures" worth the finding. such pictures as this:

"AT HOME.

For instance,

"The rain is sobbing on the wold;
The house is dark, the hearth is cold;
And stretching drear and ashy gray
Beyond the cedars, lies the bay.

"My neighbor at his window stands,
His youngest baby in his hands;
The others seek his tender kiss,

And one sweet woman crowns his bliss.

"I look upon the rainy wild;

I have no wife, I have no child;
There is no fire upon my hearth,
And none to love me on the earth."

Mr. Taylor will see that we have taken a liberty with this poem, which liberty is only our covert way of conveying to him a suggestion. Meanwhile, O reader! is not the picture finished, complete, and pathetic?

A BATCH OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS.-All the

little ones are eagerly looking, of course, for new and bright books. Christmas is coming, and New Year follows. Fortunately for the publishers, each year, if it does not produce a new crop of good books, brings forward a new crop of children to read the old ones.

This year, we have a reasonable supply of novelties. Of these, one of the handsomest and most attractive is Mr. Cranch's story of the Last of the Huggermuggers. Here is an artist and a man of genius devoting himself to entertain the little sovereigns of the fireside, and the little sovereigns ought to thank him. The adventures of Little-Jacket-a kind of diminutive Gulliver-among the giant Huggermuggers,his hiding in shells as big as houses, and subsisting on plums as big as cows, with all that afterwards befell him among that monstrous people, are here set forth with pomp and circumstance of solemn text, and lively, sketchy, humorous pictures.

-The Mysterious Story Book, and Out of Debt, Out of Danger, by Cousin Alice, come to us with a cordial word of introduction from Miss C. M. Sedgwick. The moral of both of these books is unexceptionable the style sufficiently interesting; and they are simply very good specimens of the Edgworth school of story books. To all friends of that school we recommend them.

-The title of the Bears of Augustusburg attracted us to a pretty little volume, adorned on the cover with a gilded print of a great bear, seated beside a little girl. But we are sorry to say that the story of the Augustusburg Bears is no fairy tale. It is a German moral story-the moral of which is enforced by the most disagreeable events. There is a vast difference between realistic horrors and horrors of the imagination. There can be no objection to the slaughter of hundreds of dragons and giants in a child's story; but we must protest against the introduction of bears who crunch up pious old ragmen and respectable mothers, with their great white teeth. There are pretty passages, nevertheless, in the Bears of Augustusburg, and the translation is good. Like many children's books, however, it is carelessly written. This is a sad mistake. It is useless to teach a child grammatical rules beyond his comprehension, if he hears and reads ungrammatical English.