RICHARD GRANT WHITE'S BOOKS. WORDS AND THEIR USES, PAST AND PRESENT. A Study of the English Language. New and revised edition. 12mo, $2.00. Every one who can persuade a writer for the press to read and inwardly digest Mr. White's by no means tedious volume may congratulate himself on having rendered a real service to a long-suffering country and a misused mother-tongue. - London Saturday Review. Too much cannot be said in praise of the literary spirit as expressed in the book as a whole. There is nothing narrow or petty or provincial in it. When Mr. White makes mistakes, they are the mistakes of a gentleman... Mr. White has the true critical spirit, broad, liberal, manly, appreciative, and direct. — New York Evening Post. It is difficult not to be charmed with the talent, the skill, and the sagacity which he displays in the treatment of these delicate matters. He excels in disguising the aridity of his subject, or rather that subject is transfigured in his hands; these philological dissertations are at the same time admirable literary performances. ST. RENÉ TAILLANDER, Revue des Deux Mondes, Paris. - ENGLAND WITHOUT AND WITHIN. 12mo, $2.00. It is something to be able to say concerning any book on the United States written by an English man, or any book on England written by a Yankee, that it exhibits unfailing good sense, good feeling, and good taste; but all this and much more than this can be said in commendation of Mr. Grant White's charming volume. . . . Since Mr. Emerson wrote his "English Traits" we have had no book so satisfying as this, in its portrayal of really characteristic manifestations of the peculiar quality of English social life. London Spectator. THE FATE OF MANSFIELD HUMPHREYS. Together with the Episode of Mr. Washington Adams in England. 16mo, $1.25. An exceedingly vivacious and for the most part a very forcible little essay in which the sins of various English critics of American manners are held up to deserved ridicule. - New York Tribune. THE RIVERSIDE SHAKESPEARE. Edited by RICHARD GRANT White. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Riverside Edition. With Glossarial, Historical, and Explanatory Notes. In three volumes. I. Comedies; II. Histories and Poems; III. Tragedies. Crown 8vo, the set, $7.50; half calf, $15.00. His introductions are marvels of terseness, and yet contain everything that an intelligent reader cares to know; his glossarial, historical, and explanatory notes are brief, luminous, and directly to the point; his text is as perfect as the most industrious research and painstaking study could make it; and the concise and excellent life of Shakespeare which he has prefixed to the first volume sets forth every fact that is really known with regard to the life, character, disposition, habits and writings of the poet. Harper's Monthly. THE SAME. In six volumes, octavo. Printed from the same plates as the three-volume edition, but on larger and heavier paper, and tastefully bound, forming a very desirable Library Shakespeare. The set, $15.00; half calf, $25.00. For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price by the Publishers, HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, BOSTON, MASS. February, 1885. 4 Park Street, BOSTON. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.'S LITERARY BULLETIN. Woodberry's Life of Poe. T is quite within bounds to say that the Life of Edgar Allan Poe, which Mr. George E. Woodberry has written for the series of American Men of Letters, is the first complete, authentic, and adequate account of Poe's career and literary achievements. Mr. Woodberry has had access to many sources of information not open to previous biographers of Poe, and to many important letters from Poe, not included in any life of him hitherto published. He has consequently been able to pierce the mystery which has invested certain portions of Poe's career, so that the story of his life is now clear and connected throughout. Mr. Woodberry's admirable critical faculty has been of great service, and has enabled him to produce a book which is not only an excellent biography of Poe, but a very valuable addition to the series to which it belongs. Congressional Government. Mr. Woodrow Wilson has made an exceedingly careful and thorough study of the American system of Congressional government, which students of politics (that is, all intelligent, good citizens) will find richly worth reading. He institutes a comparison of Congressional government with the Parliamentary government of Great Britain, indicating their points of likeness and of difference, and touches briefly on German and French Parliamentary government. He also points out the marked and progressive departure of Congress from the programme designed for it by the framers of the Constitution. Both historically and politically his work is one of great value, and cannot fail to command immediate and general attention. A New Year's Masque and other Poems. Miss Edith M. Thomas's poems were published under this title just before. the holidays. The Beacon, of Boston, says of the volume: "Paper, printing, and binding show what the famous Riverside Press can do, and are a delight both to the eye and the very touch. The book is one of the daintiest of the season, and the poems are not unworthy of so rich a setting. . . . As a poet ever bright and ever fair she is entitled to a hearty reception, and to sincere homage. The world has a right to expect great things of her." Houghton, Mifflin & Co.'s Literary Bulletin. Holmes's Life of Emerson. Dr. Holmes's book on Emerson has won the hearty favor which could safely be predicted for it. Not that it contains very much that is new, for that was not possible; but it presents Mr. Emerson's career and character as seen from Dr. Holmes's standpoint. And this is extremely interesting and thoroughly characteristic of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Perhaps its quality can be shown best by a few quotations : "This was his power to inspire others, to make life purer, loftier, calmer, brighter. Optimism is what the young want, and he could no more help taking the hopeful view of the universe and its future than Claude could help flooding his landscapes with sunshine." "We have seen him as an unpretending lecturer. We follow him round. as he 'peddles out all the wit he can gather from Time or from Nature,' and we find that he has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun,' and is carrying about the morning light as merchandise." "His writings, whether in prose or verse, are worthy of admiration, but his manhood was the underlying quality which gave them their true value. He shaped an ideal for the commonest life, he proposed an object to the humblest seeker after truth." "What he taught others to be he was himself. His deep and sweet hu manity won him love and reverence everywhere among those whose natures were capable of responding to the highest manifestations of character." "It seems to us to-day that Emerson's best literary work must live as long as the language lasts; but whether it live or fade from memory, the influence of his great and noble life and the spoken and written words which were its exponents, blends, indestructible, with the enduring elements of civilization." A Notable Religious Book. Professor Allen's work on "The Continuity of Christian Thought" has attracted the notice of judicious critics, who regard it as one of the most important and significant volumes in recent religious literature. A very capable historical scholar says of it in The Christian Register: — There is nothing petty or narrowing in the spirit and temper of the book. It appeals to the largest possible view of God, humanity, and their essential unity. . . . We must agree with Mr. Allen that the thought of our day about God is approaching the view of him as a being essentially united with the universe, The Unitarian Review criticises the work in some respects, but on the whole awards it high praise. It says: "The author certainly has enumerated the crucial points of modern controversy with great clearness. . . . It cannot fail of interest to any reader who is alive to theologic thought in its historic aspects or moved by the prophetic temper of the present time." The Algonquin Legends of New England. Mr. Leland's curiously interesting book has engaged the attention of English as well as American critics. The London Saturday Review of Novem Houghton, Mifflin & Co.'s Literary Bulletin. ber 22 notices it at length, saying among other things: "Mr. Leland's book is the most delightful that can reach the hands of a lover of tradition. He keeps in his narrative the Indian manner of telling; he does not lose their humor, their fresh sense of wonder. Again, he appears to have taken the most scientific pains to secure accuracy in his versions. Thus we at least incline to regard Mr. Leland's find as "honest Injun" or genuine popular myths and Mährchen. Vedder's Omar Khayyám in England. The London Academy for Nov. 29 and Dec. 13 contains articles by Miss Amelia B. Edwards, discussing quite fully both the poem and Mr. Vedder's remarkable designs. We quote two paragraphs : Such is the thinker-more philosopher than poet, more metaphysician than either whom Mr. Vedder has undertaken to illustrate. The difficulties of the task appear at a first glance to be well-nigh insurmountable, for, of all topics under the sun, ethics and metaphysics are least susceptible of translation into light, shade, form, and color. As for Omar Khayyám's subtle reasonings on life, death, fate, free-will, and eternity, we should have said a year ago that they were actually beyond the reach of art. But they have not been beyond the reach of Mr. Vedder's art. Neither ignoring nor eluding the manifold pitfalls and stumbling blocks of his subject, he has faced and overcome them by sheer might of genius. To start free was the evident and only condition of success. This the artist has done. Seizing and holding fast by the universality of Omar's thinking and teaching, he has illustrated, not a Persian poet of the eleventh century, but a sage, whose philosophy is for all time. . . . Neither Albert Dürer nor Blake, nor any other master dead and gone, could, I venture to think, have exceeded in sublimity and subtlety of conception at least a score of these extraordinary designs. Marlowe's Works. The London Academy, speaking of the new edition of the Complete Works of Marlowe, remarks: There is an increasing number of people who are contented to read him on his own merits, for his poetry, for the imaginative ease and felicity of expression which mark his simplest lines, for the passionate curiosity and vast sweep of imagination with which he compassed the spirits of Tamburlane and Faustus and Barabas, for his glimpses of Flora and Helen and Hero; and they will welcome this edition as the first since Dyce's three volumes (long out of print) in any way worthy of the poet. . . The present publisher deserves well of all lovers of Marlowe for his enterprise in undertaking so choice an edition. .. The publisher has been fortunate in securing a competent editor. Mr. A. H. Bullen is known to all those interested in such things as an authority on most matters connected with old plays. The London Athenæum pronounces this a "handsome and scholarly edition of Marlowe," and says that "before all writers of his epoch, however, Marlowe is a poets' poet." It adds: "Mr. Bullen's edition deserves warm recognition. It is intelligent, scholarly, adequate." Mr. Munger's Latest Book. Thousands of parents will be glad to learn of a book of so high a purpose and so noble a character, and withal so fresh and attractive for children, as is Mr. Munger's "Lamps and Paths." It is a book of sermons for children, but instead of being long and dry and tedious, as children find most sermons, they are short, interesting, and come to an end quite too soon. The Worcester Spy says of them: |