23 MAY 1835, Page 18

Mr. HERBERT'S Italy and Italian Literature, is a pleasantish book;

and will be new and useful to those unacquainted with the outlines of Italian literature, from its rise with DArrre down to the present day. Some men, in travelling, turn their attention to one thing, some to another ; and Mr. HERBERT made his tour in Italy a literary pilgrimage, avoiding, or but slightly noticing, the other claims upon the traveller which she possesses. The standard of his admiration of places was the great literary characters they produced : he wanders rather listlessly about till he comes to the birth-place of a great author, when he gives the reader a notice of his life and times, with an account of and a judgment on his works. The criticisms are somewhat raw, and the memoirs not -very ample or containing much novelty : the arrangement, of course, has this disadvantage, that the writers being taken geo- graphically, there is no scope for classification either of times or subjects; but on the other band, as Mr. HERBERT went first to the natal places of the first writers, the objection chiefly applies to the latter point. Appended to the work is a catalogue raisonne of literary and scientific Italian writers, and a slight history of the Italian Republics and the Popedom.