A THOUSAND books have been born into the world since the "NEW QUARTERLY RVEIEW"register-general of literary births—made its last report. Of these, some few are spinning about like those things with long names that grave gentlemen insist upon shewing to their friends in drops of dirty water and through powerful microscopes; they whirr about furiously for half-a-dozen seconds, and then disappear altogether from the field. Of such are two or three novels, a couple of foolish angry pamphlets on the Shakspeare controversy, and a certain little goose egg, which half-a-dozen cockneys at first took to be the produce of a real swan. Other children of this teeming three months are brought forth mature. With a proper sense of their dignity they range themselves at once on the shelves of "complete" libraries, there to remain undisturbed and uncut until the auctioneer shall disperse them to other similar seats of dignified repose. Such are the Castle reagh Despatches "during the Congress of Vienna, battle of Waterloo, &c.," and the third and fourth volumes of the "Grenville Papers." Others, again, pass on to take their place in our standard and enduring literature; and of such are the eleventh volume of Mr. Grote's "History of Greece," and the fourth volume of Colonel Muir's" Critical History of the Language and Literature" of the same people. Then come histories which have their position to gain, and which, like Mr. Merivale's "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Republic," do not always succeed in attracting the attention of the many, or in securing the approval of the few. The biographers, autobiographers, travellers, novelists, poets, are poured upon us pellmell, each and all puffed into a semblance of life; but not one in fifty of them lives to walk alone.

As we look upon our Table of Contents, we cannot reproach ourselves with having missed any lively, healthy child, and a hundred pages would not suffice for epitaphs on all the deadborns. Some few, however, that do not appear in full length criticism, deserve a passing notice.

The concluding volumes of the "Grenville Papers" are only worthy of attention, in that they explode a fiction which the ignorant vanity of the Grenvilles has long encouraged. The great Junius secret was in the custody of the Grenvilles! This was the tradition. The family was always mysterious and magnificent upon the subject. The proper time, it seems, is at length arrived, and the world finds that the knife-grinder has no story to tell. Instead of a revelation we have a hypothesis. Before the edition of 1812, and when the private letters from Junius to Woodfall were still unknown, there was a crowd of "demonstrated" Juniuses. Beside many others whose chances Woodfall destroyed by shewing that they were absent from England, or dead, at times when his father was in frequent communication with Ju

* Fifteen years ago this tradition was thus alluded to in the "History of Party," vol. III. p. 152:-" It is not altogether improbable that direct evidence of the authorship of these letters still exists, although its publication is reserved for some future period. It is well known that Sir Francis has left Memoirs, which, after an appointed time, will see the light. A suspicion has also long prevailed that the secret is in the custody of the Grenville returned to inquiries upon this point, merely denying any family; and the answers that have been on all occasions personal knowledge, but declining any answer to the real question whether the secret is supposed by the family to this suspicion should turn out to be well founded, it will be in their custody, certainly favours the supposition. If be better to wait with patience for the certainty, than to amuse our curiosity with plausible guesses."

nius, we had Burke, single speech Hamilton, Mr. Rosenbagen, General Lee, Wilkes, Horne Tooke, Hugh Macaulay Boyd, and Lord George Sackville. Since the publication of the miscellaneous letters, it has been quite satisfactorily proved that the Duke of Portland was Junius, and that the letters were intended to secure the renewal of the lease of the Duke's Marybone estate! We will defy any person to read the volume called "Letters to a Nobleman, proving a late Prime Minister to have been Junius," without rising from the perusal with a full conviction that the case has been fully proved. Unfortunately, however, we must say the same of the case made out for Sir Philip Francis in "Junius Identified." Sir David Brewster is a single instance of a man who was cured of a Junius delusion. He took up Lachlan Maclean, secretary to the Earl of Shelburne, but abandoned him as soon as Mr. Wingrove Cooke, in the condensed account of the Junius controversy which he inserted in his history of the Whig and Tory parties, shewed how great were the difficulties in the way of the new candidate. Mr. Britton, in a work called "Junius Elucidated," has ingeniously argued that the letters were written by Dunning, Colonel Barré, and Lord Shelburne; a Mr. Cramp has proved entirely to his own satisfaction that Junius was no other than Lord Chesterfield; and the "QUARTERLY REVIEW" made the town to laugh by a serious attempt to prove that Junius was no other than Tom Lyttleton-Ghost Lyttleton. It is a very remarkable fact, that every one of these hypotheses is fortified by the strongest proof of the identity of handwriting. Lord Chesterfield, we are told, employed Mrs. Dayrolle as his amanuensis, and skilled examiners of handwriting have declared Mrs. Dayrolle's writing to be identical with that of Junius. The amanuensis of Dunning, Barré, and Shelburne was a young Irishman named Greatrakes, and his handwriting was exactly that of Junius. We are not aware of any single work written to prove a Junius which has not a triumphant sheet of fac simile autographs.

And now Mr. W. James Smith has, in 228 closely-printed octavo pages, elaborated a hypothesis that Junius was no other than Earl Temple, and that Lady Temple, disguising her handwriting, was his amanueusis. He confesses that he does not make clear his demonstration, even to his own satisfaction: to us it appears the weakest attempt that has ever yet been made to solve this historical puzzle. It is not nearly so plausible as the Duke of Portland hypothesis, and this we take to be a complete reductio ad absurdum. It would take fifty pages of this review to discuss a tithe of Mr. Smith's minute "proofs," and the object is certainly not worth either the space or the toil.

Lord John Russell's labours upon the "Fox Papers," and also upon the "Diary and Correspondence of Moore," have received attention in separate articles.

Of Colonel Muir's work, also, we have spoken in a separate article, and we shall deal with the great achievement of Mr. Grote as a whole. Upon the eleventh volume we must here remark, that the account of the Sicilian expedition is very spiritedly given, and the characters of Dion and Timoleon well drawn and carefully worked out. Demosthenes is very carefully elaborated. The great orator finds in Mr. Grote an indulgent historian and a warm admirer, but not so indiscriminating a panegyrist, as, we must be allowed to say, appeared in Thirlwall, Heeren, and even Niebuhr. How Mr. Grote will contrive to complete his work in one more volume is beyond our comprehension. have all Alexander yet to come- -all Alexander's successors, down to the death of Seleucus, the Lamian war, the literature of the latter days of Greece, and a promised elaborate appreciation of Plato and Aristotle. Moreover, the plan and form of Mr. Grote's work espe cially requires a copious index. We cannot afford to have a history huddled up at the end, like one of Walter Scott's novels. Mr. Grote must be absolved from his promise. He has abundant materials for three more volumes.

We

It is impossible to refuse the meed of industry, and even of courage, to Mr. Finlay,* who has thrown himself a corps perdu into a period of history that made even Gibbon to yawn and doze. This gentleman has-we all have our partialities-devoted himself to the decadence of great nations. Undeterred by the shades of Montesquieu or Gibbon, he has here undertaken to recount to us three centuries and a-half of the most dreary, uninteresting, yet most involved and intricate of all historic annals. Who will follow such a guide? What care we of the nineteenth century for the Isaurian Dynasty and its Iconoclastic war, or of the struggles of John the Grammarian, or of the miraculous conversion to image worship of Michael the son of Theophilus? What interest can we take in the fortunes of Basil the Macedonian, or in the question whether or not the Procheiron was hurried into premature publicity? What care we, in the year of grace 1853, whether Michael the Drunkard was a proper person to contribute to the corpus juris civilis, or a Sclavonian groom was an appropriate medium for the restoration of the Pandects? Mr. Finlay reminds one of that animal, something between a rat and a badger, which they hunt in the American prairies, and which, plunging under ground, digs its way so rapidly

and so deviously in the subsoil, that the pursuer soon gives up the toil of following, the value of the prize not being nearly equivalent to the dusty labour.

A new Church History by the Rev. Arthur Martineau seems to be chiefly valuable for the care with which all the historical points bearing upon present controversies have been carefully picked out and placed in a strong light. Mr. Martineau is evidently a pains-taking and moderate man, and he has compiled a very useful, common-place sort of book; but the reader will be disappointed who shall expect to find herein any original research, or any great power of generalization.

In our last Number we noticed Lieutenant Lawrie's interesting account of the second Burmese war. Mr. Robertson, of the Bengal Civil Service, has, in a volume intituled "Political Incidents of the First Burmese War," completed our information upon this subject. We would draw special attention to this work, because we find in it valuable testimony from a civil servant of the Company to the expediency of what we have been so long advocating, the admission of the natives of Hindoostan to posts of honour and influence in the country of their birth. He says

The bias of the present day towards an undue depreciation of native capacity, and a disregard for purely native feeling, is quite as strong among our countrymen in civil as among those in military situations of power and command. This bias necessarily engenders a contemptuous bearing towards a people of a keen susceptibility, who are more easily to be led by their attachment to individuals, than by their reverence for any system, however wise and beneficial.

Mr. Robertson's task leads him to speak principally of the aptitude of the natives for military service; and numerous are the examples he gives of the courage and devotion of the Sepoy soldiers: but it is quite evident, from the passage above cited, that he feels the tyranny under which our Hindu fellow-subjects labour, and that he disapproves the jealous policy which teaches them the vices of slaves, and closes to

them the career of freemen.

We do not hold it part of our duties to criticise the new editions of standard books; but it is well to note, as we pass over the litera ture of the quarter, that Lord Mahon's edition of the works of that fine gentleman, who said, "My great object was to make every man I met like me, and every woman love me," is now concluded. The editor has completed his task very creditably. In a preface of thirty pages, prefixed to the first volume, he has pleasantly and fairly touched all the salient points in the public career, private conduct, and literary achieve

"The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield," edited, with notes, by Lord Mahon. 5 vols. 8vo. London: Bentley, 1845-1853.

ments of this accomplished diplomatist, wise ruler, and most finished, yet most unsuccessful courtier. Lord Chesterfield is a man to whom posterity has been unjust. Horace Walpole preferred his eloquence to that of the great Pitt. He was the first Lord Lieutenant who ever attempted to govern Ireland with impartiality: his was the voice that cried aloud for schools and villages in the Highlands immediately after '45, when all others were calling for halters and dungeons. But we must not follow this theme, or it will lead us far a-field. The fifth volume, now published, contains the "Miscellaneous Pieces," and, among them, three essays never before published. We shall be glad if we can in any way promote the sale of this work-for the careful collection of the writings of such a man as Chesterfield is a real service to literature yet would not appear to promise much success as a mercantile speculation.

To represent the autobiographers we have Colonel Chesterton,† who has been a soldier of fortune, and who is now governor of the House of Correction in Coldbath Fields. Those who know Col. Chesterton must be aware of his many estimable qualities, and will take interest in his adventures, and sympathize with his fortunes. We confess that we should have been

better pleased to have found more prison experience and less of personal adventures.

Among the biographies of the quarter we have a life of Lord Peterborough, "one of those men of careless wit and negligent grace," says Horace Walpole, "who scatter a thousand bon mots and idle verses which we painful compilers gather and hoard till the authors stare to find themselves authors as gallant as

He wrote

Amadis and as brave, and who had seen more kings and more postilions than any other man in Europe." The wild, witty, enterprising carl has been unlucky with posterity. his own life, but his widow put it in the fire after his death-this widow had been the beautiful Miss Anastasia Robinson, the great singer of her time, whom the earl ventured to make his countess after he had passed sixty. Sir Walter Scott undertook to become the biographer of the friend of Dryden and the correspondent of Swift and Pope, but lived not to complete the task. However, we have, in two volumes, a superficial account, which is perhaps quite sufficiently good to satisfy any interest now felt about a witty and eccentric nobleman, of very ill-regulated energies, who lived a century and a half ago.

"Peace, War, and Adventure, an autobiographical Memoir," by George Laval Chesterton. 2 vols. 8vo. Longmans. 1853.

"A Memoir of Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough and Monmouth, with selections from his Correspondence," by the Author of "Hochelaga.” 2 vels, 8vo. Longmans. 1853.

"The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Negro Patriot of Hayti," by the Rev. John R. Beard, is one of those trashy illustrated books which have recently been spawned in thousands. With a full recollection of Miss Martineau's excellent work upon the same subject, "The Hour and the Man," we turn over these pages with considerable discontent, and only wonder whether the writing or the woodcuts are the more unworthy of the subject.

The publication of Mr. Thackeray's lectures* appears to us to have been an injudicious step. They were admirably adapted to the purpose for which they were written, that is to say, to amuse an assembly of fashionable people. After the lady patronesses of society had listened without yawning, the crowd of demi-fashionables was sure to throng. Had Mr. Thackeray really described to his polite audience the humourous writers of the last century, criticised their writings, marked their peculiarities of style, ranked their genius, and traced their individual influence upon their age, he might posssibly, after patience and long watching, have produced an imperishable work: he might, on the other hand, have produced only a collection of false appreciations; but he certainly would have sent his dandies and dowagers to sleep. With infinite tact he just took the happy mean. To give the dignity of literature to his task, he lectured apon men of letters; but to spare the patience of his hearers he stuck close to the men and left out the letters" Our object in these lectures is rather to describe the men than their works; to deal with the latter only so far as they seem to illustrate the character of their writers."

An object so humble as this is scarcely a mark for criticism. We have, of course, poor Goldy's peach-blossom coat, Dick Steele's wife's carriage and pair, Addison's second-floor lodg ing in the Haymarket; and we are told how "Gay lived and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken and his saucer of cream, and frisked and barked, and wheezed and grew fat, and so ended." We have the daily habits and private life of the wits of the age of Queen Anne, with every foible picked out in glowing colours; with every act placed in the most illnatured light; with many either ignorantly misunderstood or wilfully distorted-witness Swift's exquisite satire upon English listnestness as to the wretchedness of the Irish people, contained in his modest proposal for eating the children of the Irish peasantry; we have a sort of waxwork show-room, wherein Swift, Steele, Addison, Congreve, and the rest, appear, dressed in the old clothes they wore in life. Every thing is before us but the thinking men of genius. Mr.

"English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century," by W. M. Thackeray. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1853.

Thackeray's puppets are so quaint, and yet so little formidable, that every dunce may take them by their collars, look into their waxen faces, and smile a comfortable smile of gratified self-complacency. It is doubtless pleasant for a well-dressed crowd to be made easy in their ignorance of English literature by being told that Congreve was but "a literary swell," and Swift a man whom they ought "to hoot;" but it must be a wretched task for a man of rare talent, like Mr. Thackeray, to minister to such sordid taste, and to write down to such vile sympathies. If we at first feel indignation at seeing a writer caricature the great men of his own profession for his own profit, and for the amusement of a circle of idle fashionables, the stronger sentiment is soon lost in pity for the exhibitor. There may be some excuse, at least some palliation, for having discharged the distasteful office: there can be none for leaving an enduring record of the deed. For ourselves we certainly shall not condescend to enter into any defence of our country's worthies. They will shed warmth and light into English hearts long after Mr. Thackeray shall be forgotten: they are as much out of Mr. Thackeray's reach as the sun that makes our day. The dirt he has thrown towards them will only fall back upon himself. It is unpleasant to write such things of a man of whose powers we have such high appreciation: but let Mr. Thackeray give us more "Vanity Fairs," and we will give him heaps of eulogy.

The travellers have been industrious, and our sporting travellers have been particularly energetic, excited, probably, by the laurels and golden opinions won by Gordon Cumming. In subsequent articles the reader will find many hair-breadth escapes in climbing after chamois, and may reckon up some of the inconveniences of alligator fishing and bison shooting. Among the few "Voyages and Travels" not separately noticed, is Captain Erskine's large volume on the Islands of the Western Pacific. This is of a description of literature wherewith we have been familiar from infancy. Black men with spears and war mats, and ladies whose identity is only varied by the increasing or decreasing volume of the girdle wherewith they are girded, canoes of well-remembered proportions, and portraits of distinguished chiefs of dingy countenance, have been the favourites of every little boy and girl who could get at a copy of Cook's voyages or Banks's geography. We have just the same things re-produced here, no better and no worse. The only novelty we notice is, that where a French officer is politely requested to stay to dinner because there is a "cuisse d'homme" on the spit, the sailors who were with him

"Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific," by John Elphinstone Erskine, Captain R.N. Murray, London. 1853.