2 of the subject, and moreover of the peculiar delicacy required in composing it. We look at them as they stand before us, and are not a little struck with their external elegance; and when we open them, we see that the printer has done his duty, and that the editor has hazarded the admission of some of the very best of the poet's verses, which the fastidiousness of former biographers had rejected.'-Athenæum, No. 142. 'This edition of the British Poets is entitled "The Aldine Poets," we presume from their careful adherence to the original text. We are too often pestered with editions which abound in blunders, and we are tempted to hail with no small satisfaction a work which, to exquisite neatness of typography joins purity of text. We predict, on this account, that the present edition will prove a favourite one with the public.'-New Monthly Magazine, July 1, 1830. 'The Poets of Great Britain form, beyond a question, not only the greatest ornament of the literature of our own land, but the most gifted and exalted line of writers that ever shone in any age or country. Their number is also very great; so much so, that even a selection of the best will probably extend to little short of seventy or eighty volumes. The principal collections hitherto put forth are those of Dr. Johnson, of Anderson, Chalmers, Bell, and Whittingham. The first of these is very incomplete; the next are the most cumbrous and ill-favoured tomes that ever were submitted to the eye of a poetical student; and the last two are almost entirely devoid of any editorial recommendations. The edition now in course of publication, and named after the Aldi, a celebrated family of critics and printers established at Venice in the fifteenth century, promise to be more complete than any of their predecessors; while on the extreme neatness of their execution, and the care bestowed on the prefatory Memoirs and Annotations, we are qualified to bestow our unfeigned approval to recommend them, in short, to our country readers as a cheap and admirable substitute for the more bulky but less perfect octavos, that rank under the very questionable title of "critical editions." To the Works of Burns we find attached a comprehensive Glossary of the Scottish Dialect. But those of Thomson are more particularly enriched by a great number of songs and smaller pieces, hitherto unpublished, and by an introduction drawn up with the greatest spirit and accuracy. The volume of Collins has an original Memoir: and an Essay on the 3 Poetry of Collins from the pen of that most accomplished baronet, Sir Egerton Brydges.'-Dorset Chronicle, Sept. 6, 1830. 'The Edition of Collins is such a one as the lovers of a poet are fond of. Collins, though unhappy as a man, has not been unfortunate as a poet. A poet's success is his immortality; a real poet, like Collins, would probably feel that he should have it; and whether this was the case or not, a poet lives in his works, in the thoughts that survive among us. He is not the perishable body, but the immortal soul. The misfortunes of the individual before us ended in his bequeathing us the precious little golden volume, in which he lives and delights us for ever. This is one of the series of publications to which Mr. Pickering, with no unpleasing pedantry, has given the epithet of Aldine. Aldus was the great, elegant publisher of his day; and Mr. Pickering is ambitious of being thought his follower. He adopts his device in the titlepage, with a motto calculated to mystify the unlearned, Aldi Discipulus Anglus : to wit, Aldus's English Disciple. We like this, because we like any thing that has faith in books or elegance of choice.' -Tatler, No. 9. Of the technical part of this volume (Collins) we have only to repeat the praise we have already most cordially given to the preceding volumes of the Aldine Edition; the perfection of printing, beautiful paper, a neat engraving, whose subject I alone would give it interest, works the most valuable in our literature, and every possible information carefully collected respecting the writers; add to all this a price infinitely lower than what is affixed to the thousand volumes of poetry, which every day appear, and are every day forgotten; are we not justified in saying Mr. Pickering deserves all the patronage public favour can bestow, and in recommending the immediate purchase of these volumes, not only to every library, but to every little bookcase, where a few pretty and favourite volumes are a treasury of great enjoyments amid more active and worldly avocations? We must not forget to mention that a very elegant Essay, by Sir Egerton Brydges, is also affixed to these poems.'Literary Gazette, No. 712. Both Thomson and Burns contain numerous poems not in any prior edition of their works. 4 It The celebrated Aldus, the publisher of the well known Aldine Editions of the Classics, was one of the earliest of the Italian printers, whose services to literature, and we may add, to civilization, it is scarcely possible to enumerate. is to Aldus that a part of our gratitude is due; since, had it not been for him, some of the ancient poets, orators, historians, and philosophers would have written, both for us and for our fathers, in vain.'-Library of Entertaining Knowledge. Preparing for Publication. THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF ROBERT GREENE, in two volumes, crown octavo; to which will be added, the Poems contained in his various Prose Tracts, with an Account of his Life and Writings, by the Rev. ALEXANDER DYCE. The plays of Greene, viz. a Looking-Glass for London, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Alphonsus, James the Fourth, and Orlando Furioso, are of extreme rarity, and, one excepted, have never been reprinted. THE WORKS OF THOMAS GRAY.-A new Edition in crown octavo: containing the whole of his English and Latin Poetry, his Letters, as printed from the original MSS. (the text of Mason being rejected as not authentic) with the addition of his Correspondence with Mr. Chute and others, and his Journal as kept by him when at Rome, consisting of Criticisms on the Statues, Pictures, and Architecture in that City, hitherto unpublished, with Notes, and an Essay on his Poetry, by the Rev. JOHN MITFORD. LONDON: WILLIAM PICKERING, CHANCERY LANE. |