The Poets and Poetry of Scotland. By James G. Wilson.
' (Mackie.) —This handsome volume of more than five hundred pages somewhat resembles in plan the " Aikin's British Poets" of our youth. The authors included are, however, more numerous, and are necessarily represented by less ample selections. Twenty-four pages only are given to Sir Walter Scott, and about thirty to Robert Burns. The editor, however, has wisely done his best to give whole poems instead of extracts, wherever it was possible. The first volume of the work—the second has not yet reached us—contains writers from Thomas the Rhymer to Richard Gall (1776-1801), though some of the poems are much subsequent to this last date. It is a very interesting and judiciously-made collection, and its value is increased by the brief notices which are given of the poets and their works. Among the- curiosities of the volume is a hitherto unpublished poem by Burns, an "Ode for Washington's Birthday." It is a very indifferent performance. This was not the thing that he could do well.— Belonging to the series called "The Chandos Poets," we have The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and of S. T. Coleridge. (Warne.) Both volumes are furnished with notes and memoirs which do not, how- ever, claim any attention. The writer of the memoir of Shelley has the merit of calling a spade a spade, a merit which this poet's biographers have sometimes failed in. These are handsome, well-printed volumes. The illustrations are hardly additions to the value of the works.---We have also The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood, edited with a Critical Memoir by W. M. Rossetti. (Maxon.) The "critical memoir" of the title-page is more correctly headed " a prefatory notice." Memoir it is not, though it contains a few judicious criticisms which we would willingly have seen multiplied.
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