Typical Selections from the Best English Authors. (Clarendon Press Series.)—This
is certainly one of the best "reading-books " that we have seen. Selections are made from fifty-nine Euglish prose writers, beginning with Bishop Latimer and ending with Lord Macaulay. Why was not the number made up to sixty, with the great name of Thackeray, a classical writer certainly, if there is any power of insight at all in con- temporary judgments? But, on the whole, we have no fault to find with the selection, which seems always to have been made with judgment.
Once we notice a quiet humour in the choice, when a characteristic ex- tract is taken from Junius, in which he contemplates the retirement of the Duke of Grafton to the University of which he was Chancellor, and warns him that "whenever the spirit of distributing prebends and bishoprics shall have departed from you, you will find that learned seminary perfectly recovered from the delirium of an installation, and, what in truth it ought to be, once more a peaceful scene of slumber and thoughtless meditation." The short prefatory notes are sensible and to the point. The whole book, in fact, which is, we learn, the work of many friends co-operating with the editor,—an immense advantage when so large a field of literature is to be traversed and examined,—is worthy to pass beyond the circle of advanced schoolboys and schoolgirls for whom it is intended, and be used as a guide for those who would study our great prose authors. It will at least give them a taste of many good things of which they will scarcely have heard before. Might we add a word in grateful remembrance of a book—one of the many good services of its author—in which the idea of this volume was long ago partly carried out, Mr. Charles Knight's "Half-Hours with the Best Authors"?
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