C URRENT LITERAT ETRE.
TWO NEW BOSWELLS.
The abiding popularity of Boswell's immortal biography is amply testified by the simultaneous appearance of the two new and handsome editions published by Messrs. Constable and Messrs. Dent. Mr. Augustine Birrell, who has edited the former, modestly attributes "all or nearly all" the merit of Messrs. Constable's handsome edition (6 vols., 6s. each vol.) to Boswell and the printers. Most of the notes are Malone's, but he has added a few of his own, and prefaced the whole with a genial appreciation of Johnson, in which he pays a handsome tribute to the '• splendid volumes " of his "revered friend Dr. Birkbeck Hill," whose eager and unresting toil and minute diligence has left scarce anything behind him for even the most humble- minded gleaners in the Johnsonian fields. Where you know you
must be beaten, the wisest course is to decline competition." The printers have done their work well, the paper is excellent, and the volumes, bound in dark-red buckram with a neat label and book-marker, are light and of a convenient size. Nor must we omit to mention the special feature of the edition, the series of one hundred illustrative portraits selected by Mr. Ernest Radford. The reproduction, however, is not always very satisfactory. Messrs. Dent's edition (3 vols., 75. 6d. each vol.) offers as its special attractions a charming essay by Mr. Austin Dobson on " Johnson's London Haunts and Habitations," and a hundred admirable topographical illustrations — i.e., houses, interiors, street scenes—from the pen of Mr. Herbert Hanlon. The por- traits are twenty in number, beautifully reproduced in photo. gravure. The text adopted is that of the sixth edition, the last published under the editorship of Malone; and Mr. Arnold Glover, the editor, has added some notes consisting mainly of very brief biographical notices of persons mentioned in the Life, and of con- temporary, or nearly contemporary, translations of the classical quotations. The volumes of this edition are considerably larger, but not unwieldy. To institute comparisons between the two issues would be difficult as well as invidious. Let it suffice if we cordially recommend both to the notice of persons on Christmas gifts intent.
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