REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

Representative Men: Seven Lectures. By R. W. Emerson. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

The subjects of these lectures, originally delivered before New England Lyceums, are Uses of Great Men; Plato, or the Philosopher; Swedenborg, or the Mystic; Montaigne, or the Skeptic; Shakspeare, or the Poet; Napoleon, or the Man of the World; and Goethe, or the Writer; subjects calculated to test the most various powers of the greatest mind, and, as treated by Mr. Emerson, appearing always in an original and fascinating, if not always a true light. The volume we consider, on the whole, the best of Mr. Emerson’s works. It is not, rhetorically speaking, so carefully written as his “Essays,” but it has more human interest, deals more generously with facts, and indicates a broader and more stalwort individuality. It is certainly one of the most fascinating books ever written, whether we consider its subtle verbal felicities, its deep and shrewd observation, its keen criticism, its beautiful mischievousness, its wit or learning, its wisdom or beauty. The best passages may be found in the lectures on Plato, Shakspeare, and Swedenborg; but the best lecture is probably that on Montaigne, which must have been written con amore. Indeed, the author seems a kind of Montaigne-Plato, with his eyes wide open both to material and spiritual facts, without a hearty self-surrender to either. There are in the volumes some speculative audacities which, in common with the rest of the human race, we consider equally erroneous and hurtful. In matters of religious faith it may be confidently asserted that mankind is right and Mr. Emerson wrong. Our author puts objectionable doctrines in language which shocks the minds of his readers without conveying to them his real ideas—a blunder, equally as regards prudence and expression.

The excellence of the book is not so much in its representations of the representative men who form its subjects, as in the representation of Mr. Emerson himself; and we doubt if, in all literature, there are revealed many individualities so peculiar, and so powerful in its peculiarity, as the individuality stamped upon every page of the present volume. We would not presume, in our limits, to attempt an analysis of an intellect so curiously complex as Mr. Emerson’s—with traits which strike us as a Parthian’s arrows, shot while he is flying, and which both provoke and defy the pursuit of criticism; but we will extract instead, a few of the beautiful and brilliant sentences which are inserted, like gems, in almost every lecture, and in each of which some sparkle of the writer’s quality appears. The lecture on Goethe is a perfect diamond necklace, shooting out light in every direction, with some flashes that illumine, for the instant, labyrinths of thought which darkness is considered to hold as exclusively her own.

In speaking of the acting of Shakspeare’s plays, he translates into words an emotion which everyone has felt, but which we never dreamed could be perfectly expressed. “The recitation,” he says, “begins; one golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes.” Again, he remarks that Shakspeare is inconceivably wise; all other writers conceivably. “A good reader,” he says, “can, in a sort, nestle into Plato’s brain, and think from thence; but not into Shakspeare’s. We are still out of doors.” Speaking of Montaigne’s use of language, he exclaims, “but these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.” Of Mr. Emerson’s peculiar wit the present volume is full of Examples. Thus he speaks of “the heaven of law, and the pismire of performance under it;” of Plato as having “clapped copyright on the world;” of the possibility, as regards marriage, of dividing the human race into two classes; “those who are out and want to get in, and those who are in and want to get out;” but quotation of small sentences is impertinent, where so many paragraphs are thoroughly pervaded with the quality.

In speaking of Plato’s mind, Mr. Emerson gives us some of his keenest and most characteristic sentences—sentences in which the thought seems to go in straight lines right at the mark, but to lack a comprehension of relations. In Plato, he says, “the freest abandonment is united with the precision of a geometer. His daring imagination gives him the more solid grasp of facts; as the birds of the highest flight have the strongest alar bones.” . . . “His strength,” he says, a few pages after, “is like the momentum of a falling planet; and his discretion, the return of its due and perfect curve.” Perhaps the best passage, however, in the lecture on Plato, is that in which he describes the divine delirium, in which the philosopher rises into the seer. “He believes that poetry, prophecy, and the high insight, are from a wisdom of which man is not master; that the gods never philosophize; but, by a celestial mania, these miracles are accomplished. Horsed on these winged steeds, he sweeps the dim regions, visits worlds which flesh cannot enter; he saw the souls in pain; he hears the doom of the judge; he beholds the penal metempsychosis; the Fates, with the rock and shears; and hears the intoxicating hum of their spindle.”

Sentences, bright and beautiful as these, might be extracted from this volume to such an extent as to bring upon us an action for violating the copyright. For fineness of wit, imagination, observation, satire and sentiment, the book hardly has its equal in American literature; with its positive opinions we have little to do. With respect to these, it may be generally said, that Mr. Emerson is always beneath the surface, and never at the centre.

The Seaside and the Fireside. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.

We have not space this month to do much more than refer to this beautiful collection of poems, instinct with sentiment and imagination, and with that drapery of beauty over the whole which constitutes the charm equally of Longfellow’s narratives and meditations. The first poem in the volume is “The Building of the Ship,” a worthy counterpart of Schiller’s “Song of the Bell,” and a grand example of the union of the common with the beautiful. We doubt if any of the poet’s longer compositions will equal it in popularity. To this succeed a number of pieces relating to the sea, of which “The Light House,” and “The Fire of Drift Wood,” appear to us the best. The poems “by the fireside,” commence with “Resignation,” an elegy warm from the author’s heart and imagination, and whose exquisite pathos has been felt and acknowledged all over the country. “The Open Window,” and “The Sand of the Desert,” belonging to this portion of the volume, are fine specimens of two processes of Longfellow’s mind—its subtle suggestiveness and its clear pictorial power. A long poem of twenty-seven pages, translated from the Gascon of Jasmin, entitled “The Blind Girl of Castèl-Cuillè,” is a tragedy whose power, sweetness, and pathos the dullest reader cannot resist. We wish that Mr. Longfellow would give us more specimens of this charming poet, as worthily “Englished” as the present.

We think that none of Mr. Longfellow’s volumes will be received with more favor than this, embodying as it does the best qualities of his muse, and leaving little for even the critic to grumble at but the smallness of its bulk.

Old Portraits and Modern Sketches. By John G. Whittier. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 12mo.

This elegantly printed volume, from the press of a firm celebrated all over the country for tasteful books, is one of Mr. Whittier’s most characteristic productions. It contains strongly marked representations of John Bunyan, Thomas Ellwood, James Naylor, Andrew Marvell, John Roberts, Samuel Hopkins, Richard Baxter, William Leggett, Nathaniel P. Rogers, and Robert Dinsmoore. If sympathy be, as Carlyle says, the first condition of insight, there can be no doubt that these striking individualities have sat to the right artist for their portraits. The best pieces in the volume are John Bunyan, Naylor, Marvell and Baxter, which are really mental portraits, glowing with life and meaning. The inspiration of Whittier is impassioned conscience—a conscience as bold and resolute as it is quick and delicate; and wit, imagination, understanding and learning, all work under the direction of this moral force. His general taste is for the strong and daring in action and meditation; his field, the region of great ideas and universal sentiments; but at the same time he has a capacity for embodying the delicacies and refinements of thought and emotion, and in pure pathos and beauty he has few American superiors. All these qualities are displayed in this volume in their most genial action, and the result is a book of equal fineness and power.

History of Spanish Literature. By George Ticknor. New York: Harper & Brothers. 3 vols. 8vo.

Ben Jonson was wont to congratulate himself that his solid dramas were called “works,” while the dramatic productions of his contemporaries were but “plays.” Professor Ticknor’s History is eminently a “work,” the result of twenty years of thought and research. To its erudition no other epithet can apply than Dominie Sampson’s epithet of “prodigious.” Every department of the literature of a whole nation, through some ten centuries of existence, the author has thoroughly mastered. No intellectual history with which we are acquainted rests on such a solid basis of authorities. As the author has had the subject in his thoughts from his youth, his erudition, immense as it is, does not encumber his mind. It does not use him, but he uses it; and the result is that the work has the great merit of clear statement. It is not only full of knowledge, but the knowledge is so presented as to be communicated to every reader. Those who are little interested in the subject as a whole, will still find the work attractive from its biographical matter, its analysis of the plot and characters of different plays, and its fine translations of particular poems and ballads. The accounts given of the stories forming the plots of some of the dramas, are interesting as mere tales.

There are few American books which are so much calculated to raise the foreign estimate of American Scholarship and intelligence as this History of Spanish Literature, and we doubt if there be many men, in Spain or out of Spain, who could have written it.

People I have Met; or Pictures of Society and People of Mark. Drawn under a Thin Veil of Fiction. By N. Parker Willis. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo.

In this elegant volume we have a collection of Mr. Willis’s tales and sketches, recording the results of his intercourse with society on both sides of the Atlantic. It indicates that the author’s practical observation of men and things is as acute and sure as if his head did not contain the most trickery and exuberant of human fancies. No one can read the volume without delight, and without having his knowledge of society increased. It is a fit companion to the “Rural Letters,” being as full of the world as those are of nature. The writer’s sunny and sportive, keen and sparkling mind, glances and gleams through every story and sketch; and over the whole there is that indefinable grace, which the poet alone can communicate to the things of convention, and which almost lifts them into an ideal region of existence.

Monuments of Egypt; or Egypt a Witness for the Bible. By Francis L. Hawks, D. D., LL. D. With Notes of a Voyage up the Nile. By an American. New York; Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 8vo.

Mr. Putnam has got up this volume with his usual indifference to expense, and his usual regard for typographical beauty. The illustrative engravings are exactly what the reader wants to assist him in the comprehension of the text. Dr. Hawks refuses, in the preface, the name of author, preferring the more modest appellation of compiler; but we should like to see many more compilations from the same source. He has carefully studied the works of the great English and French savons and travelers relating to the subject, and has presented in clear language the truths which they have established. We commend the book to all who are desirous of accurate information about a most interesting country, in its past and present condition.

A System of Ancient and Mediæval Geography, for the Use of Schools and Colleges. By Charles Anthon, LL. D. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 8vo.

This solid and well printed volume is but one out of many proofs of the author’s extensive erudition and classical enthusiasm. We are incompetent to speak of its value as a class-book, but certainly can bear testimony to its wealth of information relating to ancient countries, and its interest to all who are students of ancient history. The work rests on a solid foundation of over a hundred authorities, German, English, and French, and indicates on every page a scholarship as minute in details as it is large in its grasp. In the limits of some seven hundred and fifty octavo pages, crammed rather than filled with matter, Dr. Anthon has almost compressed a library of knowledge.

The King of the Hurons. By the Author of “The First of the Knickerbockers,” and “The Young Patroon.” New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

In the press of this month’s publications we trust that this novel, the work of a man of shrewd and accurate observation, graceful fancy, and brilliant style, will not be lost in the crowd. The author’s wit and humor sparkle over his narrative, and lend an increased fascination even to the engrossing interest of the characters and incidents.

Essay on Christian Baptism. By Baptist W. Noel, M. A. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo.

The author of this little volume has already attained great notoriety by his volume directed against the union of church and state. The object of his present work is to declare himself by conviction a Baptist, and to exhibit the train of scriptural argumentation by which he came to the conclusion that believers have the exclusive right to Christian baptism. The work is well written, and the reasoning indicates a conscientious inquirer after truth.

Fairy Tales from all Nations. By Anthony R. Montalba. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.

The Harpers fairly bewilder critics by the number and variety of their publications. In following their books we have to make the most violent ascents and descents to and from one department of letters to another. We had hardly finished a survey of a Latin Dictionary before we came directly upon this delicious volume of fairy stories, containing a representation of supernatural novelties from Denmark, Germany, France, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Norway, Italy, Hungary, Iceland, Bohemia, and some Eastern countries. The collection is one of the most fascinating we have ever seen, and its interest is much increased to the younger class of readers by some thirty grotesque illustrations.

The History of England. By David Hume. Vol. 5. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co.

This volume of the cheap Boston edition of Hume is devoted to Charles I. and the Commonwealth; contains the principal alleged offences of the author against the principles of civil and religious liberty, and is, accordingly, that part of his great work which has been made the subject of the most vehement controversies. It is, perhaps, the ablest in style and matter of the whole, and may be profitably read in connection with Macaulay’s views on the same subjects.

Saint Leger, or The Threads of Life. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

This is the work of a man of intense conceptions, whose style is urged on by the furor of his thinking, and who, by sheer strength, drags the readers along with him from the first to the last page. The detail of the hero’s personal experience, if given with less vividness, would certainly tire, but as expressed in the author’s vehement style, it fastens attention as much as the incidents.

The Whale and his Captors; or The Whaleman’s Adventures, and The Whale’s Biography. By Rev. Henry T. Cheever. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo.

This volume is the production of a scholar, a man of letters, and a clergyman; and the characteristics of all three are modified by a sort of assumed Jack-Tarism, always racy, if sometimes in questionable taste. It is spirited in style, full of a landsman’s exultation in the incidents and scenery of sea life, and laden with interesting information pleasantly told.