t
correctly and elegantly printed volumes of Bohn's Standard Library--the
best and cheapest popular series ever issued in any country.

* * * * *

Many very correct writers are very poor authors, and there are abundance
of good books with imperfect rhetoric; yet we have a right to ask some
attention to the details of style in a literary critic. Professor Henry
Reed has a delicate appreciation in poetry, but his remarks are nearly
always marred by verbal infelicities incompatible with a knowledge of
literary art. Thus, within a few pages of his Memoir of Gray, just
published, he says of Jacob Bryant, who has been dead a century, that
"he _has_ recorded;" that "Gray retained a high admiration of Dryden's
poetry, _as_ was strongly expressed," &c.; that an ode published in
1747, "being the first publication _of_ his English verse" (meaning his
first publication in English verse); that Gray could not "break through
the circumspection of so contracted a system of metaphysics _as that of
Locke's_;" that "it is apparent from what Gray _has_ done" (as if Gray
were now living, or present), &c. &c. &c. &c. &c., all through every
thing he publishes. Such things in a professor of mathematics would
attract no attention, but they will be observed in a "Professor of
English Literature."

* * * * *

Mr. BANCROFT is not, as we were led by some newspaper to state in the
_International_, engaged in printing his History of the Revolution; and
when he does give it to the press, it is by no means likely that he will
have to leave New-York to find a publisher for it. The History of the
Colonization of America--introductory to the History of the United
States--has secured for Mr. Bancroft a place among the greatest
historians; he has now the assurance that he is writing for other ages;
and he will not endanger his fame, nor fail of the utmost perfection in
his work, for any needless haste. This second part of his History will
probably occupy five volumes; and although the story has been written by
many hands, with more or less fulness and various degrees of justice,
Mr. Bancroft will have studied it from beginning to end in the original
materials, of which his collection is by far the best that has ever been
made. If upon this field any one successfully competes with him for the
historic wreath, he must come after him, and be guided by his light.

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