Mr. Bohn has just issued a new volume of his Antiquarian Library; and we
shall be greatly surprised if it does not prove one of the most popular of
the whole series. It is a new and greatly enlarged edition of Mr.
Keightley's _Fairy Mythology illustrative of the Romance and Superstition
of various Countries_, a work characterised alike by a quick perception of
the beauty of the popular myths recorded in its pages, the good taste
manifested in their selection, and the learning and scholarship with which
Mr. Keightley has illustrated them. The lovers of folk-lore will be
delighted with this new edition of a book, which such men as Goethe, Grimm,
Von Hammer, Douce, and Southey have agreed in commending; and of which the
appearance is particularly well timed, for a fitter book for fire-side
reading, or a Christmas present, we know not than this edition of
Keightley's _Fairy Mythology_, with its inimitable frontispiece by George
Cruikshank, which alone is worth the price of the volume.
Whitaker's _Clergyman's Diary and Ecclesiastical Calendar_ is intended to
supply a want which is acknowledged to have been long felt by the clergy,
though the lawyer and man of business have been for many years well
supplied with works of a similar character. A glance at the Table of
Contents shows how much valuable matter, of especial interest to our
clerical friends, has here been collected from various sources for their
information; and to prove the value of a work destined, we have no doubt,
to find for many years an extensive and well-deserved patronage.
Few of our readers but have tested and found the value of Mrs. Cowden
Clarke's _Concordance to Shakspeare_; and few are the nurseries into which
some of her clever and kindly books for children have not found their way;
so that albeit her projected series of tales, _The Girlhood of Shakspeare's
Heroines_, scarcely belongs to the class of works usually noticed in our
columns, we gladly find in Mrs. Clarke's love of children and reverence for
Shakspeare, an excuse for saying a few words in favour of her good work of
tracing the probable antecedents in the history of some of Shakspeare's
heroines.
We have received the following Catalogues:--Edward Stibbs' (331. Strand)
Catalogue, Part I, of a Valuable Collection of Books; W. S. Lincoln's
(Cheltenham House, Westminster Road) Catalogue No. 63. of English and
Foreign Second-hand Books.
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