CURRENT LITERATURE.
Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott. With a biographical and critical memoir by Francis Turner Palgravo. (Macmillan and Co.).—This is a very good and complete edition of Sir Walter Scott's poems—it is not an edition de lure, as we have seen it termed—but the poems are well arranged, the paper is good, the print remarkably clear, in short, as a popular edition it leaves nothing to be desired. The want of such a one has long been felt, combining real excellence with cheapness. Mr. Palgrave gives a sketch of Sir Walter's life as illustrating his poems, and his remarks are in general just and pertinent ; we cannot, however, agree with him in thinking Sir Walter Scott uncritical, when he speaks of himself and Campbell as being poetically much inferior to Burns. He was poet enough himself to know when the "divine braidings fell," and it appears to us that his literary critical judgments are singularly candid and correct. The longer poems are given in order of composition, with an explanatory preface as introduction, and at the end are collected all the smaller poems and songs from the plays and novels, with the dates and the names of the works from which they are taken. Altogether, it is a very perfect and convenient edition of Scott's poems.
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