Before proceeding to notice any of the books which we have received this
week, we will call the attention of the publishing world to two important
works which we know to be now wanting a publisher, namely, I. _A
Syriac-English Lexicon to the New Testament and Book of Psalms_, arranged
alphabetically, with the derivatives referred to their proper roots, and a
companion of the principal words in the cognate languages; and II. _A
Syriac-English Grammar_, translated and abridged from Hoffman's larger
work.
Samuel Pepys is the dearest old gossip that ever lived; and every new
edition of his incomparable Diary will serve but to increase his reputation
as the especial chronicler of his age. Every page of it abounds not only in
curious indications of the tone and feelings of the times, and the
character of the writer, but also in most graphic illustrations of the
social condition of the country. It is this that renders it a work which
calls for much careful editing and illustrative annotation, and
consequently gives to every succeeding edition new value. Well pleased are
we, therefore, to receive from Lord Braybrooke a fourth edition, revised
and corrected, of the _Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys_. and well
pleased to offer our testimony to the great care with which its noble
editor has executed his duties. Thanks to his good judgment, and to the
great assistance which he acknowledges to have received from Messrs.
Holmes, Peter Cunningham, Yeowell, &c., his fourth edition is by far the
best which has yet appeared, and is the one which must hereafter be
referred to as the standard one. The Index, too, has been revised and
enlarged, which adds no little to the value of the book.
Mr. Murray has broken fresh ground in his _British Classics_ by the
publication of the first volume of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, with Notes and Preface by Dean Milman and M. Guizot_, and edited,
with Notes, by Dr. Smith. If the publisher showed good tact in selecting
Mr. P. Cunningham for editor of _Goldsmith_, he has shown no less in
entrusting the editing of his new Gibbon to Dr. Smith, whose various
Dictionaries point him out as peculiarly fitted for such a task. In such
well practised hands, therefore, there can be little doubt as to the mode
in which the labour of editing will be conducted; and a very slight glance
at the getting up of this first volume will serve to prove that, for a
library edition of Gibbon, while this is the cheapest it will be also the
handsomest ever offered to the public.
BOOKS RECEIVED.--Macaulay's _Critical and Historical Essays, People's
Edition_, Part I. The first issue of an edition of these admirable Essays,
which will, when completed, cost only Seven Shillings! Can cheapness go
much lower?--_Adventures in the Wilds of North America_, by Charles Lanman,
_edited_ by C. R. Wild, forming Parts LV. and LVI. of Longman's
_Traveller's Library_. These adventures, partly piscatorial, are of
sufficient interest to justify their publication even without the
_imprimatur_, which they have received, of so good a critic as Washington
Irving.--Darling's _Cyclopaedia Bibliographica_, Part XVII., extends from
Andrew Rivet to William Shepheard.
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