CURRENT LITERATURE.
Boswell's Life of Johnson. Edited by Augustine Birrell. Vols. I. and II. (Constable and Co.)—Both iu his introduction and in his notes Mr. Birrell has followed, only too strictly, the advice of an eminent sage, giving so little that we wish for more. His in- troduction is full of sense and sympathy ; his notes are really illus- trative, and tell us something that we are the better for knowing. It is particularly aggravating to be told that he had "made many notes, but on reflection struck most of them out." Still we have good reason to be thankful for an edition of a very useful and attractive kind. It is to be completed, we see, in six volumes.
In the series of Blackie's "Home and School Library" (Blackie and Son) we have a selection from Macaulay's essays of six that have the common character of being Essays on English History. The six are :—" Burleigh and his Tim es," "John Hampden," "Milton," "Sir James Mackintosh," "History of the Revolution," and two on "The Earl of Chatham." Our only criticism on this selection is that Macaulay did not think highly of the Milton essay, considering it to be disfigured by "gaudy and ungraceful orna- ment." Perhaps it might have been better to substitute" Warren Hastings" for it.—Another volume in the same series is The Rifle Rangers ; or, Adventures in South Mexico, by Captain Mayne Reid. The tale was published in 1850, and was not, as the pub- lishers' introduction states, the author's "first notable work." "The Scalp-Hunters "—the title-page of this volume describes him as the" Author of The Scalp-Hunters' "—appeared in 1847.
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