and it is full, far too full, of small thea-
trical effects and unnatural positions.
It was
the beginning of the sentimentality that
entered into the revival of old Scandinavian
romance, the "little speck within the garnered
fruit." The evil gradually assumed such
enormous proportions, and culminated fatally
under the gold-dust and glitter of Tegnér's
'Frithiofssaga.' The fourth and fifth acts are
extraordinarily tasteless and ill-conceived; the
mock-ghost of Saint Olaf marching round the
Cathedral as the clock strikes twelve is a
positively farcical figure, and nothing can well
be more absurd than the final scene, where
Valborg, kneeling beside the corpse of Axel, is
literally sung to death by Wilhelm, for the
sole and single purpose of winding the
tragedy up decently with the death of heroine
as well as hero.

Notwithstanding all this, 'Axel og Valborg' is well worth reading. No serious work was ever written by Oehlenschläger that did not flash with jewelled passages. The scene in the third act, where the marriage having been violently broken off, the lovers are left alone to say farewell, is equally original and exquisite; and there is little in the first three acts that one would wish changed. Mr. Butler's version is very graceful and correct, so well done, in fact, that we doubly regret that we are to see no more translations from his hand. An equally successful version of 'Hakon Jarl' or 'Palnatoke' would be a real addition to our literature.

A COURSE of grammar and English reading might enable Miss Dickens, who has some imagination, to construct a readable story. At present, whether she rises into rhapsody, or sinks into slang, she is equally far from expressing herself in decent English. It is not only that she falls into an occasional lapse or solecism, but that every turn of expression is marked by vulgarity. The usual low level of the narrative, which is vernacular in the strictest sense, becomes offensively slavish when there is any attempt at wit. The jests, for instance, of Mr. Norman Howard, in spite of his euphonious name, would sound slangy in the mouth of a draper's assistant. The bluntness of the good young ladies, whose mission it is to thwart the schemes of the villain of the piece, degenerates into the most brutal rudeness. They speak and think like very rough men, while the interesting artist, who represents masculine excellence, weeps, gushes, and bewails himself like a silly, sentimental milliner. A more loathsome object than this precious hero, with his sickening long hair and selfish grievances, has seldom been introduced to the public. The patience of our readers would be exhausted were we to enumerate instances of the peculiarity of our author's style. "Derived at," "by the name of," "without" for unless, "dein several impossible senses, telling a story without attributes," are a few gems extracted at random. The story, of course, is as grossly improbable as the method of telling it. An ancient baronet's family,

teriorate"

could not give us, as they had never previously been published, the full particulars of Mr. Barbauld's illness, or the letters which were in Mrs. confess, that this book, though a fair and careful Le Breton's own possession. Then, too, we must account of Mrs. Barbauld, does not attain to real literary distinction. It just wants the vivifying touch that turns a dead biography into an actual life. We read about Mrs. Barbauld, but we do not see her. We learn what she did and what she wrote, what other people said of her, and what she thought of the world of men and letters, but we get no further. Mrs. Barbauld is not the real living person that their biographers have made of Charlotte Bronté or of John Sterling. We should add, that the second volume of this work contains Mrs. Barbauld's poems, and a well chosen selection from her prose works; so that, taken altogether, this is certainly the best edition that has yet appeared. It is annoying, however, to have, within a few days of each other, two lives of Mrs. Barbauld, neither of them what we might have hoped. If Mrs. Ellis had only had Mrs. Le Breton's fuller knowledge, or if Mrs. Le Breton had only taken a tithe of Mrs. Ellis's trouble, what this opportunity of correcting a misprint in our a capital book we should have had! We may take this opportunity of correcting a misprint

rejoicing in the Norman name of Rudkin, is
thrown into vast confusion by the head of the
family taking a young wife. Sir Bevis's
nieces, who reckoned upon sharing his fortune,
resent this as a personal wrong. The only strange
thing about this part of the story is, that the
author evidently shares their moral indignation.
However, that their wrath may not be purely
selfish, the new Lady Rudkin is provided with
an early lover, who also turns out to be en-
titled in remainder to the estates, and who
acts the bold, bad man with elaborate energy.
He kisses the wife, cheats an insurance office,
and murders the heir, winding up his villainy
by marrying Lady Rudkin when Sir Bevis
has been driven to suicide. A species
of counterplot is concerned with the fortunes
of the long-haired artist, who is the son of a
sister of the baronet. Clorinda Rudkin many
years before ran off with a gipsy, who was
really a Spanish nobleman in disguise, and
her son has grown up in ignorance of his
family and claims. This is the less impor-
tant, as though his cousin discovers him, she
feels herself bound by a promise not to en-
lighten him on the subject. When he dies,
and the second baronet commits suicide, the from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (Chris-
PROF. PALMER'S History of the Jewish Nation,
estates of the Rudkins revert to the Crown, tian Knowledge Society) is a pleasant, readable
and we take leave of a set of people with the little book, which is much more than can be said
most extraordinary names, and speaking the for many works of the same kind. In the earlier
most extraordinary language, it has ever been period, where an historian mainly follows the
our fortune to meet with. There is an Ap-illustration has been brought to bear on the subject
course of the Biblical narrative, a large fund of
pendix, in which a middle-class maiden soli-
from Prof. Palmer's personal knowledge of many
loquizes madly on the loss of a patrician lover,
of the localities referred to, especially the Desert
whose name is truly marvellous.
of the forty years' Wanderings, which he was the
first thoroughly to explore. The history of the
Jews after the captivity is, save the period which
saw the first rise of Christianity, a terra incognita
to nine readers out of ten. Thus, a cordial welcome

In 'John Fenn's Wife' the married couples
compels them to fall asunder.
are influenced by some centrifugal force which
Everybody
packs up and runs away. First in order of
time, though not in that of the narrative,
comes the extraordinary clergyman, who runs
away from his newly-married wife, whom he
fondly loves, because he meets with a woman
whom he has seduced in his youth, but to
whom he has the strongest aversion. His
equally extraordinary wife, not to be outdone,
hides herself from her erratic husband, and
suffers him to marry again in the belief of her
death. Her daughter, who has nothing on
her conscience, except having once sung at a
music-hall, flies from her affectionate husband
on the bare hint from a casual tramp that he

knows something to her disadvantage. All
parties travel to town, and the game of hide-
and-seek ends happily in the re-union of the
first couple, the re-establishment of Mrs. John
Fenn in an impregnably respectable position,
and her sudden development from a frivolous
child into a reasonable woman. With due
allowance for absurdities, the story is not
badly written.

OUR LIBRARY TABLE.

Le Breton's Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld,' and
America another life, Memoir of Mrs. A. L. Bar-
now, curiously enough, there comes to us from
bauld, with many of her letters, and a selection
from her poems and prose writings, by Grace A.
Ellis. This is a book of really considerable merit.
It is conscientious and painstaking. Nothing is
omitted that the author could gather from any
available source of information; and scarcely a
mention of Mrs. Barbauld can have appeared in
print that has escaped Mrs. Ellis's notice. On the
other hand, Mrs. Le Breton had a certain advantage,
of which she made far too little; and Mrs. Ellis

IT was but last week that we reviewed Mrs.

last week's review. It was Sir William Gell who was Mrs. Barbauld's pupil.

may be given to the good résumé here furnished

of the history of the troubles which followed the return, the Maccabean revolt, and the subsequent chequered fortunes of the Jews till the capture of Jerusalem by Titus, after which follows an interesting digression on the fresh light which recent researches have thrown on the topography of the Holy City. The history after the fall of the religious polity, the revolt of Bar-Cocheba, the formation of the Mishna and Gemara, the treatment of the Jews under Gothic and Mohammedan rule, and the long series of their persecutions and the periodical appearance of false Messiahs, are graphically told; and the leading Jewish names, in medieval and later times, as Maimonides, Spinoza, and that truly great man, Moses Mennumber of woodcuts and a good map do much to delssohn, are referred to in passing. A large embellish the work, and will vastly increase its interest with the class of readers for whom the book was specially intended. Here and there we notice a trifling lapsus plume in passing, as the mention of Domitian as "Vespasian's brother and successor," or of the famous Inquisitor as Thomas de Torquemada, or, may we add, that of one of the most distinguished scholars at the revival of learning as one Reuchlin." The book, however, is an exceedingly good one, and the Christian Knowledge Society and Prof. Palmer will earn many young readers' thanks for helping to dislodge the dry old text-books that still rule in too many places.

66

MR. THORNTON has republished his excellent little work, A Plea for Peasant Proprietors, with additions, in which he points out that it would

have been wiser to have carried out his scheme in Ireland. The work is issued by Messrs. Mac

millan.

MESSRS. HURST & BLACKETT send us Words of Hope and Comfort to those in Sorrow, which we mentioned some weeks ago as in the press. These letters, the work of a pure and devout spirit,

SHAKSPEARE'S 'EDWARD THE THIRD.'

Maidenhead, March, 1874.

ONE hundred and fourteen years ago Capel printed, in his small volume of 'Prolusions,' the historical play of 'Edward the Third,' announcing it as a work by Shakspeare. Such it undoubtedly is; but when Malone published his 'Supplement' in 1780 he omitted it, thereby discountenancing the notion that it, or any part of it, had proceeded from the pen of our great dramatist. In what follows I am about to state some of the grounds for my entire conviction that Capel was right, and that the play ought to have been included, not only in the Folio of 1623, but in every edition of Shakspeare's productions from that day to the present.

I have taken considerable pains with the subject, and, in my opinion, it is worthy of all the labours of the best of our Shakspearean scholars, whether on this or on the other side of the Atlantic. I shall be as brief as possible, and I hope to avoid mistakes; but it is not pleasant, when walking, to know that there is somebody close behind anxious to trip up one's heels. Let us all humbly strive to attain the same end; and no man ought to feel more humble than even the ablest commentator on Shakspeare. What a fly is he on the wheel!

'Edward the Third' was first printed in 1596, a year earlier than any known play by Shakspeare, and it was reprinted for the same bookseller (Cuthbert Burby, or perhaps Burbadge) in 1599; in the interval came out Shakspeare's 'Richard the Second,''Richard the Third,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' (all three in 1597), 'Love's Labour's Lost' and The First Part of Henry the Fourth' in 1598. All the rest appeared in 1600 or afterwards. The second impression of 'Edward the Third' bears date in 1599, when, as far as we are aware, no drama by Shakspeare was originally issued; it was anonymous in both instances, and so were Shakspeare's 'Richard the Second' and 'Richard the Third' in their first editions of 1597. The same reason for the non-appearance of the author's name might apply in 1596 as in 1597; and it was not until 1598 that Shakspeare's name was prefixed to 'Richard the Second' and 'Richard the Third.' The causes why dramatic authorship was at that date avowed or unavowed are but very imperfectly, if at all, understood.

commentators as to the words in 'Hamlet,' act ii.
sc. 2, "a good kissing carrion," Warburton con-
tending that they should be "a god kissing
carrion"; and he was right, though opposed to
all the old copies, where we read "For if the sun
breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing
carrion," &c.

In 'Edward the Third' we find the following
lines given to Warwick:-

The freshest summer's day doth soonest taint
The loathed carrion that it seems to kiss.

Who smiles upon the basest weed that grows

As lovingly as on the fragrant rose.

The three last acts of the drama are devoted to the wars in France, and to the victories of Cressy and Poictiers, all conducted with true Shakspearean energy and vigour, and concluding with the delivery of the burgesses of Calais from their halters by the intercession of the Queen. Nothing can be finer in its way, but the play must have taken long in the representation. This portion of the subject is, of course, from Holinshed, while

Again, in 'The Merchant of Venice,' act iv. sc. 1, the love-scenes of the first two acts are from 'The we have this passage:

And kings approach the nearest unto God
In giving life and safety unto men.

Deloney published his novel of 'Jack of New-
bery' in the same year as Edward the Third,'
and there we find even a still closer copy: "Herein
do men come nearest unto God in shewing mercy
and compassion."

Everybody is so well acquainted with the
famous character of Prince Henry given by the
Archbishop in 'Henry the Fifth' that I need not
quote it; but I ask any reader to compare with it
the subsequent impassioned lines on the Countess
of Salisbury, put into the mouth of Edward, and
to say if they could proceed from any pen but that
of Shakspeare.

When she would talk of peace, methinks her tongue
Commanded war to prison; when of war,
It waken'd Cæsar from his Roman grave
To hear war beautified by her discourse.
Wisdom is foolishness but in her tongue;
Beauty a slander but in her fair face:
There is no summer but in her cheerful looks,
No frosty winter but in her disdain.

Who could have written this and a great deal
more in this play but Shakspeare? I might quote
the whole quarto, for it is all his.

It contains also allusions to contemporaneous works. Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander' was not printed (as far as is now known) until 1598, but many manuscript copies of so famous a production were in circulation before 1596, and, in reference to the story, the succeeding lines are put into the mouth of Edward the Third, speaking of the object of his passion :—

Fairer thou art by far than Hero was; Beardless Leander not so strong as I : He swom an easy current for his love; But I will through a Hellespont of blood Arrive at Sestos where my Hero is. Hellespont is absurdly misprinted Helly spout in both the old copies of Edward the Third,' for I have collated them throughout. But this is not In attributing Edward the Third' to Shak- the only reference to a popular poem, though speare, I rely confidently not more upon par- nobody (least of all, perhaps, Capel) has hitherto ticular passages and expressions, than upon the understood it, or the high interest attached to it. whole spirit and character of the performance. Shakspeare's Lucrece' had been printed in Capel did not assign a single reason, whether 1594, two years before 'Edward the Third' came general or special, admitting at the same time that from the press. The Countess of Salisbury has there was no external evidence upon the point. thrown herself at the King's feet, and is threatenI rely upon internal evidence only; and I defying to stab herself rather than submit to his anybody at all acquainted with the style and language of our great dramatist to read Edward the Third' from end to end without arriving at the decision that it must have been the work of Shakspeare, and of no other poet. I shall not make extracts to establish this general proposition, but content myself with a few quotations, which, as I contend, lead by a different road to the very gate of truth.

Let it be borne in mind always that no printed play by Shakspeare is so old by a year as

Edward the Third.' In act ii. sc. 1 we read as
follows: the Countess of Salisbury is persuading
the King to relinquish his suit to her to be faith-
less to her husband's bed, and she asks,
Will your sacred self

Commit high treason 'gainst the King of heaven,
To stamp his image in forbidden metal?

In 'Measure for Measure,' act ii. sc. 4, Angelo tells Isabella that he will not, as a judge,

remit

Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid.

Everybody must remember the dispute among

lawless passion; Edward, overcome by her virtue
and courage, and resolving to conquer his hopeless
folly, thus exclaims, alluding clearly to Shak-
speare's own 'Lucrece,' then in the height of its
popularity :-

Arise, true English lady; whom our isle
May better boast of, than e'er Roman might
Of her, whose ransack'd treasury hath task'd
The vain endeavour of so many pens.
Surely this allusion is evident enough, and im-

mediately connects Shakspeare with the admirable
play under consideration. After what I have said,
I need not dwell upon particular passages of poetry;
but I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting
a few lines where Edward instructs his secretary-
poet thus to address in verse the lady upon whom
the King dotes:-

Out with the moon-line! I will none of it,
And let me have her liken'd to the sun :

Say, she hath thrice more splendour than the sun :
That her perfection emulates the sun,
That she breeds sweets as plenteous as the sun;
That she doth thaw cold winter like the sun,
That she doth cheer fresh summer like the sun,
That she doth dazzle gazers like the sun :
And in this application of the sun,
Bid her be free and general as the sun,

Palace of Pleasure,' a book so often used by
Shakspeare.

It seems wonderful that so little attention has
ever been paid to this noble historical drama; for
I cannot call to mind any allusion to it either in
ancient or more modern times. It ought to have
preceded 'Richard the Second' in the folios, and
in every other edition of Shakspeare. It is no
doubtful play. If instead of such paltry work as
picking holes in old coats, the New Shakspere
Society would reprint this grand historical drama,
they would confer a lasting benefit upon our early
theatrical literature, and nobody would be more
thankful than
J. PAYNE COLLIER.

P.S. Some years ago a proposal was made to me to collect and correct all the old plays attributed on any authority to Shakspeare, but even then I found my failing energies and industry unequal to the task: I, however, collated several, including the two impressions of Edward the Third' in 1596 and 1599, both in the library of the Duke of Devonshire; and besides the few I have here pointed out, that single drama contains many other parallels and illustrations of quite as much importance. Let the New Shakspere Society set boldly to work, and reprint all those imputed

plays.

LORD ELLENBOROUGH.

In the review, in your number for March 14, of the Correspondence of Lord Ellenborough, published by me, two charges are brought against his memory. One is, that he concocted an "artful scheme" to evade responsibility in his orders to Generals Nott and Pollock as to the campaign of 1842. This view has, I know, already been started by vehement partisans of Sir George Pollock, and writers closely connected with Lord Ellenborough's opponents in the old Board of Directors. If true, it would entirely deprive him of that claim to be considered a high-minded and honourable statesman, which the reviewer himself seems to allow him. And what does this injurious interpretation rest upon? It is clear that, as his letters show, he regarded a march on Cabul from the first as a hazardous enterprise. Another disaster like that of the Khyber and our Empire was, in his opinion, lost. But when, by that energy for which your reviewer gives him credit, he had remedied many deficiencies in the condition of the armies as to supplies and means of transport, when partial successes had raised their spirit, he did not feel justified in absolutely forbidding, against the opinion or without the support of the opinion of the Generals, an advance, which, if successful, would produce such valuable results. To one thing only he was always opposed, any concession to the views of a section of "politicals" which might entangle us in permanent engagements as to Afghan affairs. This may have been right or wrong, but does it justify an assumption of "disingenuousness and have been "alien from his character." shrinking from responsibility," which you admit to

The second charge, of "believing he could teach it seems, to the China operations, seems to me to war-worn Generals their art," especially referring, confute the former. Were Nott and Pollock so different from Gough in capacity that it was disingenuous" to leave any discretion to the two former, and impertinence to interfere with the latter? But with reference to China, Lord Ellenborough possessed special information, derived from one of the very few Englishmen then familiar with the waters of the Yang-tse Kiang.. My father, the late Lord Colchester, had surveyed

neighbours and they to him, and stands on a footing with them that reminds me of the patriarchal intercourse of Ulysses with his godlike swineherd. In the house of the worthy heroes of the story is a room which is filled with casts of the best ancient works of art, so that it looks like a small museum, and is called Athens by the owners. In the evening, a Greek tragedy (let us hope in a translation) is read out. The faithful old servant is regularly present, and as regularly sleeps through the performance upon the bench by the stove. To bring these heterogeneous elements together is, for us North Germans, no easy task. Among us, a bench by the stove is not found in houses which have rooms filled with sculpture, and perhaps foreigners are still better off than we in this respect. They, at any rate, will conclude that in Germany master and servant live in the same rooms, and that their common evening entertainment is the reading of Sophocles and Euripides, only with the difference that the masters read, and the servants sleep-by

the stove.

it is a whole world that the author sets in
motion.

Has he really understood how to set it in
motion? I might and could answer this question
with an unqualified "Yes," but (" but is reflection,"
says Thackeray) I fear my "Yes" will be "sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of thought," which, for that
matter, pervades the book. Not that the tale is
devoid of "enterprises of great pith and moment,"
but that terrible "but" comes in again. The form
of the book is the same as that of the 'Vicar of
Wakefield,' of 'Tristram Shandy,'' Pelham,' ' Pen-
dennis,' 'David Copperfield.' No form is better
fitted to embrace a miscellaneous mass of matter
such as is put before us; but under one condition.
The author must understand how to step on with
seven-leagued boots at times, in order, where need
is, to be able to dwell on individual points. For
these particulars and this full surrender to his ma-
terial are expected of the author. When Copper-
field describes to us his wooing of Dora, it must
not occur to us that he who writes those delicious
foolish pages has, I don't know how many years
after, married Agnes. And here, in my opinion,
Herr Auerbach has failed. The death of
the hero's wife, and his sorrow; the scenes in the
cabinet of the Prince; the deaths of Ernst and

of Dr. Johnson.' Boswell issued two editions of his book, the first in 1791, the second in 1793. At his death, when the preparation of a third edition had just begun, Malone took up the task, and under his supervision no less than four editions were issued. The sixth, or fourth from the author's death, was issued in 1811, and was the last superintended by Malone, who died in that year. From the date of his death this edition remained the standard one, until the year 1831, when it was supplanted by Croker's edition in five volumes, which under various forms has held its place until the present moment. Malone's and Croker's are substantially the groundwork upon which all succeeding editors have worked. Malone seriously exceeded the privileges of his literary executorship in converting notes into text and vice versâ, in shifting the To speak seriously, the story is incomprehensible place of notes, and "revising" the text itself. and impossible, the moment one thinks of it as These changes were not very material as to transplanted to North Germany. What is the story? substance, but still such a mode of "settling This is an easy question to ask and a difficult one to the text," as it was called, pursued through answer when one is speaking of a long novel: not one which seems long, but which is quite a slight Martella on the battle-field, these are certainly sult in a serious departure from the original. a whole series of editions, could only restory, concealed in a huge mass of history and anec- masterpieces of true epic art; but they are only dotes, like Quatrevingt-Treize,' but one like 'Mid- isolated passages, which cannot recompense us for Malone, indeed, announced in his advertisedlemarch'! 'Middlemarch' is not the essence of the the lack of concise rapid narrative. It is sadly try-ments, that "every new remark, not written purest epic poetry; but, even when one has de-ing at last to the patience to have to wade, for three by the author," together with "the letters ducted all that the author, privately and confiden- volumes, through the rubbish of a garrulous old now introduced, are carefully included within tially, tells the reader about her characters, and man's diary. The English public is already dis- crotchets, that the author may not be answerthat is a good deal,-there still remains enough posed to regard German novels as not interesting, able for anything which has not the sanction over to prove pretty troublesome, even to a judge and I am afraid that its prejudice will not be overwhose daily occupation it is to sum up in comof his approbation." This system, however, come by Herr Auerbach's book. A prejudice it plicated cases. It is the same with Waldfried,' is, and a prejudice it remains. It is, indeed, in- has long since been abandoned, and in the which fills three tolerably thick volumes, and eradicable, if people will judge the whole contem- modern editions we find the author jostling is a long novel in consequence of the great porary literature of a great and highly-gifted nation with a crowd of intruders-Croker, Malone, number of characters that are introduced, and the from two or three books which they have read in Blakeway, Kearney-his annotations being quantity of public and private occurrences which the course of their lives, and which, perhaps, were also labelled with his own name, as though the author has endeavoured to bring in, to develope, really tiresome. Are there not such books in every he had been introduced, like them. Even the and to portray. His aim has been to illustrate, and literature? I can pledge myself to give you a by the fortunes of a family, which, in their turn, long list but no, I would not, for all the world, decency of "enclosing between crotchets" are illustrated by the characters of the heads of the vex you, and I have no inclination to make an had been dropped. Croker's performance was family, the history of Germany from 1848 to the "Oratio pro Domo." FRIEDERICH SPIELHAGEN. nearly unique in the annals of editing. present day. The paterfamilias recounts in the only did he make interpolations in the text first person his own story and that of his relatives; and the tale might be called 'The Family on a vast scale, but he overloaded the whole with elaborate notes. Obscure allusions exof Waldfried,' or 'Mr. Waldfried and his Family.' The family is by no means a small one. There are three sons and four daughters. One of the latter is dead by the time the tale begins, but her husband has married again, and remains an important member of the family. The sons, of course, have either married or might have married, and the daughters too. Of the marriages children have been born, who at the time the novel opens are already grown up; so that by the end of the book the author can make his hero happy as a great-grandfather. And besides all these people, whose names even it is a hard task to remember, there are a number of subordinate characters-quite a little nation, in This was really unavoidable, if the little nation was to prove a mirror of the great nation. In fact, as one or other of the members of the family is in each case involved, every important event in the last five-and-twenty years of German history comes on the tapis. The eldest son has been one of the insurgents of '48, who inscribed on their banners the Frankfort "Grundrechte," and at times also the Republic, and has been obliged to fly to America. A second son is a Professor, and represents the learned element, and its share in the struggles of the time. The youngest, not the least important character in the book, cannot endure the contest in '66, in which the South German patriots were worsted; and four years later atones for his desertion of the colours by a heroic death in a battle against the hereditary enemy. Then a son-in-law is an officer in the Würtemberg army, and he also has to take his share of the fights of 1866 and 1870; while a daughter is married in France, in Alsace, and through 1870 again becomes German. You see,

short.

Literary Gossip.

A VOLUME of poems by George Eliot is in the press, and will shortly be issued by Messrs. Blackwood & Sons.

MR. R. W. EMERSON has allowed himself to be nominated as a candidate for the Lord Rectorship of the University of Glasgow.

DR. JOHN STUART, of the General Register
House, Edinburgh, has in preparation, Ob-
servations on the Law and Practice in Scot-
land relating to Dispensation for Marriage,
with special reference to the Dispensation for
the Marriage of James, Earl of Bothwell, with
Lady Jean Gordon, in 1565.' The volume

will include various records hitherto un-
printed, and will be illustrated by a fac-
simile, from the original at Dunrobin, of the
dispensation referred to, with a likeness of
Lady Jean Gordon, from the contemporary
portrait in the collection of His Grace the
Duke of Sutherland, at Dunrobin.

WE understand that Messrs. Henry S. King
& Co. are about to issue a cheap edition of the
Laureate's works, in ten monthly volumes, to

be entitled "The Cabinet Edition."

MESSRS. HURST & BLACKETT'S forthcoming
novels are, a new story, from the pen of Mrs.
Oliphant, entitled For Love and Life,' and
Claude Meadowleigh: Artist,' by Capt. M.
Montague.

MR. PERCY FITZGERALD is editing a new
edition, in three volumes, of Boswell's 'Life

Not

plained, biographies furnished, blanks filled

up,
mistakes corrected, opinions, either of
Boswell or of Johnson, refuted in controversial
style, contemporary authors largely quoted,
and political opinions and prejudices duly
ventilated-these were but a tithe of the

Crokerian contribution. This extraordinary
treatment of an author was long ago exposed
by Mr. Carlyle. Croker admitted his mis-
take, and in a later edition withdrew the bulk
of the intruded matter. Yet he could not
bring himself to sacrifice the whole of the
foreign element; and the work still includes
masses of Thrale and other letters, diaries,
But he did not stop there, and
and the like.
a diligent examination warrants us in saying
that he has tampered with the text. Letters
have been transposed, and shifted here and
there, on account of some assumed incon-
sistency; dates have been altered, notes re-
written, cut up, and distributed, or altogether
omitted; while, with an overstrained deli-
cacy, adjectives, of a somewhat coarse flavour,

have been struck out, and others substituted.
In this new edition, the reader will have the
original text of Boswell's first edition exactly
as it was printed, with the old spelling, punc-
tuation, paragraphs, &c. Text, notes, and
alterations will now, for the first time, be
given complete, distinct, and fenced off, as it
were, from such notes and illustrations as are
supplied from other sources. Many of these