SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

A CRITICAL VIEW FROM THE OBSERVATORY.

MEN are talking just now far too fast and too long for us to give much space to what others are writing : the King's Speech is of more importance than any of his subjects' Books. The great Palaver having commenced, we must listen more and read less— of Books at least. At any rate, for the present week, we shall contract the scale of our critiques : though we do not limit the range of our observations, we must diminish their bulk, and proceed merely to give a bird's-eye view of the republic of letters. Let us mount then the Observatory of the Spectator's Library— our Coliseum, and look down upon the doings of busy Literary London.

We distinctly mark the book factories. There is an entrance and exit of authors : a constant succession of batches of little -gingerbread-like cubes appear in the windows, and disappear : there are mysterious closetings, unfolding of MSS., shaking of wise-looking heads, and the elongation of melancholy-looking faces : printers' devils sneak about the door—collectors with blue bags rush in and out—now a huge bale of learning, or mavhap unlearning, is bundled in, now bundled out. A waggon jokes away a few tons of literature le be expanded in the country : a truck rolls in a pile of wet sheets to envelop the seething brains of the Metropolis. Let us see the result of all this at the moment of our observation.

Smith and Elder. Let us begin in the East: what is doing in that emporium of every thing exchangeable, Cornhill? SMITH and ELDER, a young but enterprising house, has just brought forth its second volume of the Library of Romance. Mr. LEITCH RITCHIE, the editor, has this time been his own accoucheur. The subject is Schinderhannes, the Robber of the Rhine, and an expansion on the romantic principle of some anecdotes of this notorious bandit, in one of the Annuals, for which Mr. RITCHIE furnished the packing-paper, alias the letterpress. The romance of Schinderhannes is not much to our taste ; though the author can scarcely write any thing which is not on some score or other worthy of being read. There has lately been produced here a second edition of ANDERSON'S Poetical Aspirations. As we see ourselves referred to for a favourable testimonial of the first, we are happily spared the trouble of repetition. We are not for ever in the same mood, and it is perhaps quite as well for Mr. ANDERSON that our decision has already gone forth.

E. Wilson. Crossing over the way, and at the sign of the lively Grasshopper, stands the obliging Mr. Wrssosr,—who will take no denial. We must look at his book-store, though the tide of merchants were setting out of the Exchange-gates, and threatened to carry us off to Brixton or Dulwich. Mr7WILSONhas lately become the most prolific of publishers: he has got a traveller from almost every country of Europe to tell his opinion of us; and JUNIUS' REDIVIVUS, on the other hand, to tell us what he thinks of all the rest of the world. Mr. Winsosr, his travellers, and translators, marshalled and commanded by the said masque au fer, promise to set mankind pretty straight upon their legs in no long time. ACHILLE MURAT,With his lively and pleasant Commentary on the United States, is of the very newest manufacture under the Grasshopper: the world was not, however, to be trusted without a word of advice from the Producing Man's Companion; Justus Rseivivus has therefore added a supplement on Slavery. It is of far inferior quality to the book, and has the fault in England of being tolerably unnecessary. The conceit of this person is amusing, his pertinacity is remarkable: he thrusts himself everywhere—he is the John Jones of the press. There is hardly a periodical appearing into which he does not every now and then press his commonplaces, flavoured with a certain sauce piquant& compounded of vulgarity and impudence. He attempts to write down aristocratic distinctions, and boasts that he is a mechanic in bad health. He has the arrogance of the aristocrats he is envious of, and the taste of the class o which he would fain bethe oracle. Mr. E. WILSON has published another work this week connected with America,. Mr. REUSS'S book on the Trade between Great Britain and the United States is the practical book of a merchant: the statesman and the statistician will,,however, find in it a store of valuable data, or we are much mistaken.

Pursuing our ocular course Westward, we arrive at the shop of the well-known bookseller of theWard of Cheap,— Tegg. His production this week is but small, and not native : it is an importation of Epigrams, from Glasgow, of all places the world. The Epig,ranastatist's Annual contains a point tor

every day in the year. It has a sting for each morning. Some of them are what stings should be, short and sharp: take, for in stance, the Epigram

„For the 353d Day of the Year of our Lord 1833.

TO A HIGHLAND INNKEEPER.

Your salmon are so fat and red, Your fowls so thin and blue, 'Tis seen which Providence has fed, And which were rear'd by you.

At the Row, and in the neighbourhood of 1St. Paul's, the book factories gather thick, shoulder close, and all seem so busy, it is difficult to say who are dealing in old books and who in new.

First of the firms, stands the house of Longman and Company,

"The dome of thought, the palace of the soul."

They have, however, given birth to some but insignificant progeny during the period of our survey. TYRWHIT'S edition of Prideaza s Guide to Churchwardens, though a very useful book, and very necessary for those poor officers on whom so many inconsistent duties are heaped, is but a tidiculus mus, when we look at the monticular elevation of the book-store, and the enormous length of the firm,—which is among firms what the Mississippi or the Father of Waters is among rivers. MornurtwELL's Poems, too, add not much to the consequence of the house, albeit a pleasing collection of verse.

Whittaker and Company appear to have only an imported work to show at this moment: it is a Latin Syntax by Mr. DAY, and is of Bristol manufacture. It is well worthy the attention of Latin students who are arrived at an age to read and consider. Syntax, however, ought only to be put into the hands of such. The BUSBY plan of whipping it into infants, by way of grounding them, is a species of moral torture, left off, we trust, by the modern schoolmaster, though not, it is to be feared, altogether.

Somewhere in these sacred precincts, we detect the serious house of Westley and Davis. Mrs. FLETCHER'S Three Histories are, however, by no means grave affairs; and are decked out, on their second appearance, in a robe of so gay and dashing a hue, that we should never have suspected their having issued from so solemn a mansion. Mrs. FLETCHER was very lately Miss JEWSBURY; so, perhaps, the silk attire is in honour of the authoress's wedding.

Holdsworth and Ball present a work which goes well to the sound of the great bell which overhangs its place of birth, and makes the whole centre or omphale of the City ring with its solemn lesson. This is Mr. MALLOCH'S Poem on the Immortality of the Soul. The verse is stately, the author animated with his subject, and the whole poem such as not to discredit his theme : and this is saying not a little.

Bringing the eye from under the shades of the Cathedral, we find Valpy at work upon his Shakspeare. He has exhausted the Ancients, and now he has commenced upon the chief of all the Moderns. Two of his neat volumes are in the act of emerging from the dark alley in which he produces his children of light. The cave of Trophonius was a pleasant place in comparison.

But stay—have we not passed over the laboratory of another learned printer, who pursues his luminous way by paths equally dark ? Of all the men of type cast in this degenerate age, none so worthy to rank with the STEPHENSES and ELZEVIRS of old as

Richard Taylor, one of the scientific editors of the Journal of Science; the Eighth Number of which is entitled to the attention of all men who watch the progress of the severer Muses.

Tilt is one of the monosyllabic publishers of Fleet Street, and his bee-hive may be detected somewhat below the ides of these two great printers. We catch him in the act of recommending the Monthly Magazine, which lie now issues. We have looked over its new Number, and are glad to discover an old and favourite hand in it : the name of the owner we know not : he pretends to be great in pocket-picking, and threatens to put his claw into ours : alas ! he is out there. He is the author of Some Gentleman's Biography— the clever play of a light and idle wit. It seems we were wrong in a guess we made as to his identity with the author of another pleasant piece in a similar vein : he sets us right, and leads us into the right track in both cases. Be this as it may, he is a master of what, for want of an accredited term, we will call "equivocal narrative."

Under our very eyes, Gri.ffiths is at work. He has lately got out the Battle of Oblivion, dipped in crimson and died in gamboge. This is a satire, penned by some smart youth at Chelmsford. He must come to town. Mr. GRIFFITHS will show him he is wrong— very wrong indeed. The boy's name is CoLLER,—he has not had the grace to conceal it: whence we augur ill : we fear even the lessons of the experienced Mr. GRIFFITHS will have but small effect.

What is that monumental work we perceive lying up towards the North, on the area of Mr. Joseph Ogle Robinson's establishment? We do not mean the bronze statue of Fox—no, that other square yeleped Red Lion ! That book, quoth Mr. ROBINSON, is the Book of Bungay. It is THE Dictionary, and in it lies united the French and English Language. It is a monument in more ways than one: it is a monument of beauty and accuracy in typography ; at is the triumph of the great printing establishment at Bungay, of which Messrs. CHI LDS are the fathers. The compiler is the Reverend JOSEPH WiLsox, of St. Gregory's College,—where that co:lege is, we do not pretend to know, but we believe it is or was at Dmay : it is not of much matter. The work bears every mark of being well done : but a Dictionary demands the test of time, and this, as we have said, is a Titan not a week old. The pronouncing part of the work we shall not pronounce upon, seeing that we attadi no importance to any attempt at thus conveying instruction. Pro. nunciation never yet was written, and certainly never will be by the• Reverend J. WILSON; who thus sounds the words

ccurn—klotsh.

WrrnEwiten—ouitzh-otutZn'd.

Going a little farther North, we perceive Sampson Low (how nicely balanced is the name !) has works highly deserving of our observation. Of the Harmony of the Gospels, this is neither fitting time nor place to speak. Of VENTOUILLAC'S French Grammar, we may say that a superficial examination leads us to opine that it is worthy of the reputation of its experienced author. The object now in Grammars, we are happy to see, is to reduce the parts necessary to be learned by rote into the smallest possible compass.

The Western bibliopoleiseem to have been somewhat inactive. The successor of Cor.num—the possessor of a great name— Richard Bentley, has nothing at this instant to lay before our critical vision but a number of his Standard Novels. It is, to be sure, a good one ; being no less than a new translation, by MiSS ISABELL HILL, of Madame de STAEL'S chef-d'oeuvre, Corinne. The translation appears well executed. Miss LANDON has graced the work 'vial her translation of two Odes of Corinne. They are not translated, but re-inspired: they are magnificent poems, in a sort of stately lyric prose, such as an English improvisatriee would naturally use. Nothing the gifted L. E. L. has yet done has .produced on us so deep an impression of the loftiness of her genius. None but a mind of true poetical inspiration could have taken up Corinne's ideas and recast them in their present noble form. They are full of enthusiasm, and seem the fresh outpourings of a just-awakened spirit. For such translations, elsewhere, we know not where to look.

But what are those military-looking volumes which Mr. BENTLEY is marshalling in such great force, with their uniform of scarlet—their Crown, and Garter, and Rose? "What literary rank and file has he now got on parade ? It must be a company of bibliographical grenadiers. How gracefully they carry their honours! how erect their port—how blushingly their scarlet cloaks hang around their warlike forms ! This regimental array is, we see on a closer inspection, the History of the Coldstream Guards, by Colonel MACKINNON, and which at this moment the bibliopolical commanding officer, General BENTLEY, is manceuvering into public notice. To-day is parade-day, and no book ever cut a handsomer figure. As to its value under active service, we cannot at this moment say; for we have, like so many other people, as yet only confined our attention to the scarlet coat and the accoutrements of unexampled beauty and gaiety.

But our eyes are growing dim : books, like the sun, are not long to be gazed at with impunity. Burlington Street must be the limit of our hebdomadal gaze : we descend from the post of observation ; giving notice, that by next week, probably on Tuesday if the day be clear, we shall resume our survey, and expect our bibliopoles to have got their productions spread out in neat array before us', that we may be able to give our friends in the Country a good account of their doings.