CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Life-Work of the Author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." By Florine Thayer McCray. (Funk and Wagnalls.)—Mrs. McCray writes this volume with the approval of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's relatives, and these have furnished her with a variety of help. "Uncle Tom's Cabin " was beyond question one of the greatest literary successes that the world has ever seen. There is one aspect of this success which has a peculiar interest. Mrs. Stowe was the means indirectly of forwarding in a remarkable degree linguistic study. Never was a book so widely translated at precisely the same time. The great' polyglottist, Mr. Thomas Watts, who probably surpassed the more famous Mezzofanti, gives his testimony to the linguistic importance of the work in a notable letter. He points out the great variety of style, from the most serious to the most comic, in the tale, and says : "The student who has once mastered Uncle Tom' in Welsh or Wallachian, is not likely to meet any further difficulties in his pro- gress through Welsh or Wallachian prose." Mrs. McCray gives us many interesting details about the author's home-life at the time when she was busy with the book.
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