THE CORRESPONDENCE OF HENRY CRABB ROBIN- SON WITH THE WORDSWORTH
CIRCLE (1808-1866). Edited by Edith J. Morley. (Clarendon Press. 2 vols. 42s.)-- Wordsworthians will be grateful to Miss Morley for the infinite care with which she has edited all the letters from or con- cerning the Wordsworths that are preserved in the enormous Crabb Robinson correspondence at Dr. Williams's Library. It has been a colossal task, for Miss Morley has looked through thousands of letters and, gleaning after Professor Knight, has printed many Wordsworth family letters for the first time and others in full which had been known only in a condensed form. But the editor's labour has been well spent, for the two volumes will be indispensable to students of Wordsworth, whose fame, a little dimmed perhaps in recent years, is aow rapidly reviving. As an instance of the many curious things in the book, we may cite Wordssvorth's remarks on the death of John Scott, editor of the London Magazine, in a duel with Christie in 1821-: :" do not "riakillebt any other English author's perishing in this way. It is an Innovation the effect of others which promise no good to the Republic of Letters or to the Country." He did not foresee that duels would cease in England within the next twenty years. Christie had fought the duel on behalf of Lockhart, Walter Scott's son-in-law, who had annoyed John Scott by an article in Blackwood. Literary men took these things seriously in George the Fourth's days.
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