NEW Eorrzons. — Ure's Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines. By Robert
Hunt, assisted by F. W. Rudler. 3 vols. (Longmans.) This is the seventh edition of a book which has long been known as a standard work of reference, but it would have ceased to merit this dig- nity, if it had not been kept up with continued diligence to the present state of knowledge. This edition before us, indeed, with its three mas- sive volumes, each numbering more than a thousand closely-printed pages, is, as regards both its magnitude and its subjects, a very different work from that originally published by Dr. TJre. It is, indeed the third edition since the work came, in 1858, on Dr. Ure's death, under the management of Mr. Hunt. The greatest pains have been taken to make it and keep it worthy of its reputation.—We have before us a new edition of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. 2 vols. Translated by Mr. Henry Reeve. (Longmans.) An interesting memoir of the author has been prefixed. M. de Tocqueville died in 1859, at the age of 54. He was not more than 27 when he made the visit to the United States which resulted about three years later in the publication of this book. The forty years which have passed since then have, on the whole, verified the truth of his observations, and the book remains a remarkable proof of sagacity and insight, exercised at an age when unprejudiced judgments are difficult, and on a subject remark- ably apt to baffle the most intelligent judge. M. de Tocqueville enjoyed the good-fortune, even among political thinkers, of being appreciated by his contemporaries, at the same time that he wrote with the sobriety and candour which commend his work to posterity. It was an honour which has been seldom vouchsafed to a private citizen, however illustrious, that the Admiralty, to save him a tedious journey, sent him home in a special steamer.—The smaller edition of the History of the Christian Church, by James C. Robertson, M.A., Canon of Canter- bury (Murray), is- concluded in two volumes, numbered vii. and viii. The history takes us down to the year 1517. We can only repeat the regret expressed before that so learned and judicious a writer has not found it within his power to give us a history of the period of the Reformation.
We have also to notice a very elegant edition of The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson. (Henry S. King and Co.) It is known as the "Author's Edition," and contains, we are told, his "final revisions and alterations." This " finality " is well. Interesting as are the indi- cations of change in thought and feeling which alterations furnish, we feel much doubt whether, after a certain point, a man's work is likely to be the better for them. Mr. Tennyson's ear, for instance, has now grown so subtle, that ordinary readers cannot help feeling that some of his changes are, in point of melody, at best not improvements. The edition is complete in five volumes, the first of which contains "Early Poems and English Idylls ;" the second, "Locksley Hall, ttc.," including the poems, such as Lucretius, which have appeared at intervals during the last few years ; the third, "The Idylls of the King ;" the fourth, "The Princess and Maud ;" and the fifth, "Enoch Arden and In Memoriam."—Shakespeare's Library (Reeves and Turner) is a new edition, under the care of Mr. A. C. Haz- litt, and greatly enlarged, of a work originally published about thirty years ago by Mr. J. P. Collier. Mr. Collier's work was itself the ex- pansion of a work sent out by Mr. Nichols nearly a century ago, and consisting of the six "foundation-plays," in which some of Shakespeare's dramas as we have them had their origin. The idea was to give the materials which Shakespeare used, or, in some cases, may have been
supposed to have used, in the construction of his plays. These materials are of a very curious kind. The Menaechius of Plautus, for instance, is among them, in a translation which appeared at the end of the sixteenth century, Cox's being the first extant form (Plautus, of course, having borrowed from au older Greek original), of the plot of the" Comedy of Errors." So, again, we find Plutarch's "Life of Theseus," in North's translation, produced as having supplied a part, though indeed but a small part, of the materials of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Whether, indeed, there was any debt in this case is, as Mr. Hazlitt remarks, quite doubtful. In "Romeo and Juliet," on the other hand, the obligation is manifest, whether it be to Arthur Broke's " Romens and Juliet," or to " Rhomeo and Juliette," from Painter's "Palace of Pleasure." If in
The Merry Wives of Windsor," Shakespeare borrowed from "The Story of Lucius and Camillus," and the other tales with the same plot, then it is characteristic of him and of English stage morality in general—the unlucky period of the Restoration excepted—that the gallant, and not the husband, is made the victim. Part I. consists of four volumes, and contains the romances and tales from which Shakespeare pre- sumably borrowed ; the two volumes of Part II. contain the actual dramas employed by him.—Of the New Editions and Reprints, we may mention A Primer of the English Constitution and Government, by Sheldon Ames (Longmans); The Temple of Memory, by Xenelm Henry Digby (Longmans); "Spiritual Songs" for the Sundays and Holidays throughout the Year, by John S. B. Memell (Longmans); The Poetical Works of Dr. John Leyden, with Memoir by Thomas Brown (Nimmo) ; The Book of Scottish Song, by Alexander Whitelaw (Blaekie), and from the same author and publisher, The Book of Scottish Ballads ; The Gaberlunzie's Wallet, by James Ballantyne (The Edinburgh Publishing Company); The Gentle Shepherd, by Allen Ramsay, with a Life of the Author and Reference Glossary by J. R. (John Ross); A Handbook of the English Language, by R. G. Latham, M.D. (Longmans); Familiar Quotations, by John Bartlett (Little and Brown, Boston, U.S.; London, Sampson Low and Co.); and Picciola ; or, the Prison Flower, by X. B. Saintine (Sampson Low and Co.).
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