Robinson Crusoe. Edited after the original editions by J. W.
Clark, MA., Fellow of Trinity -College, Cambridge. (Macmillan.)—Defoe was very angry with the • people who abridged his work. •" The second part," ho says, in -his original preface, "is every way as entertaining as the first, contains As strange and surprising incidents, and as great a variety of thorn . . . . . -and this makes the abridging this-work ae scandalous as it is knavish and ridiculous," &c. We believe that the public at large has scarcely endorsed this opinion of the author's, and that the curtailed account of the adventures of the famous mariner has been the most popular. However, the present generation has now au opportunity of judging. The edition before us, a neat four-and-sixpenny volume, in pleasant, old-fashioned type, reproduces faithfully the original text ; the editor has in no case modernized the spelliqg or phraseology, considering that the archaisms are hardly ever such as to render the meaning doubtful even to ordinary readers, and that both old and young' will be pleased to have the English classics preserved in their integrity. We are inclined to think -the old rather than the young; the boys, we suspect, will be dismayed at the look of the book, and will certainly be bored by the details. These, on the other hand, will delight, grown-up readers, who will tfind in them much curious illustration of manners and customs, and ways of thinking of the times, calculated to afford quite a new sensation to those who are acquainted only with modern editions of Robinson Crusoe.
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