1887.)

In an introductory note prefixed to the initial volume of 'Great
Writers,' a series of literary monographs now being issued by Mr. Walter
Scott, the publisher himself comes forward in the kindest manner possible
to give his authors the requisite 'puff preliminary,' and ventures to
express the modest opinion that such original and valuable works 'have
never before been produced in any part of the world at a price so low as
a shilling a volume.' Far be it from us to make any heartless allusion
to the fact that Shakespeare's Sonnets were brought out at fivepence, or
that for fourpence-halfpenny one could have bought a Martial in ancient
Rome. Every man, a cynical American tells us, has the right to beat a
drum before his booth. Still, we must acknowledge that Mr. Walter Scott
would have been much better employed in correcting some of the more
obvious errors that appear in his series. When, for instance, we come
across such a phrase as 'the brotherly liberality of the brothers
Wedgewood,' the awkwardness of the expression is hardly atoned for by the
fact that the name of the great potter is misspelt; Longfellow is so
essentially poor in rhymes that it is unfair to rob him even of one, and
the misquotation on page 77 is absolutely unkind; the joke Coleridge
himself made upon the subject should have been sufficient to remind any
one that 'Comberbach' (sic) was not the name under which he enlisted, and
no real beauty is added to the first line of his pathetic Work Without
Hope by printing 'lare' (sic) instead of 'lair.' The truth is that all
premature panegyrics bring their own punishment upon themselves and, in
the present case, though the series has only just entered upon existence,
already a great deal of the work done is careless, disappointing, unequal
and tedious.

Mr. Eric Robertson's Longfellow is a most depressing book. No one
survives being over-estimated, nor is there any surer way of destroying
an author's reputation than to glorify him without judgment and to praise
him without tact. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the first true
men of letters America produced, and as such deserves a high place in any
history of American civilisation. To a land out of breath in its greed
for gain he showed the example of a life devoted entirely to the study of
literature; his lectures, though not by any means brilliant, were still
productive of much good; he had a most charming and gracious personality,
an