LITEEATUEE AND LITERARY PROGRESS IN 1872. 



437 



by Frederic Mistral, translated by Harriet 

 W. Preston, introduces to us a very pleasing 

 poem, and at the same time to a writer of mu- 

 sical English verse. But the most noteworthy 

 publication of the year, judging by the im- 

 pression it produced on critical opinions, was 

 "The Book, and Other Poems,'] by William B. 

 "Wright. It seems the unsealing of a new 

 fountain of poetic inspiration. The following 

 have also appeared : 



Poems ; to- which is appended the Antigone of 

 Sophocles, literally translated. By J. G. Brmkle. 



Bream Life, and Other Poems. By Stockton Bates. 



Songs of Early and Later Years. By Mrs. M. J. 

 E. Crawford. 



Poems. By Amanda M. Edmonds. 



Legends and Lyrics. By Paul II. Hayne. 



Poems. By S. Z. Shores. 



Idyls of Gettysburg. By Miss E. Latimer. 



Robert of Woodleigh, and Other Poems. By Phil- 

 ip Stoner. 



My Eecreations. By Emily E. Ford. 



Imogen, and Other Poems. 



Broken Dreams : a Novel in Verse. By Celia 

 Gardner. 



Eiego ; or, The Spanish Martyr. A Tragedy. By 

 Judge John Eobinson. 



The Outcast, and Other Poems. By J. "Watson. 



Vesta (and Other Poems). By Hester A. Benedict. 



Ehymes of Yankee Land. By AeJla Greene. 



Poems. By Mary E. Pope. 



The Village Picnic, and Other Poems. By Thom- 

 as Durfee. 



Eymes atween Times. By Thomas Mackellar. 



The Architect of Cologne, and Other Poems. By 

 Mary A. Atkinson. 



ESSAYS AND CRITICISM. The Rev. Henry N. 

 Hudson, whose edition of Shakespeare's works 

 has been received with high appreciation both 

 in this country and in England, has recast his 

 " Lectures on Shakespeare," published in 1847, 

 making virtually a new book, under the title 

 " Shakespeare : His Life, Art, and Characters." 

 The proof of much study, of ripe thought, of 

 patient labor, of insight into the meaning and 

 spirit of his author, that has become like a sure 

 instinct, appears on every page. The style is 

 more chastened than that of his earlier work, 

 as well as richer in substance and in the vari- 

 ety of pertinent illustration from the wide field 

 of literature. Mr. Hudson has also published 

 a selection from the plays of Shakespeare, 

 edited, slightly expurgated, and annotated, for 

 schools and families. " Goethe : His Life and 

 Works," by G. H. Calvert, as a biography, 

 shows too great a readiness to condone its 

 hero's faults, but, as a criticism, deserves the 

 praise it has had awarded to it. Mr. A. Bron- 

 on Alcott, whose fame, as one of the original 

 " Transcendentalists " of New England and a 

 conversational oracle, has been widely bruited, 

 converses with the public in a volume which 

 is in form made up of a diary and other essays, 

 but, in outward incident, or, rather, in the 

 lack of it, one day is so much like another that 

 one discovers no special significance in the 

 dates. The essays are serious, bookish, medi- 

 tative, rather than reflective, and express 

 moods rather than any distinct purposes. The 

 absence of humor and of practical suggestive- 



ness makes the author's utterance somewhat 

 unimpressive. A volume, coming from a like 

 social seclusion, but representing a vigorous 

 out-of-doors life, is Mr. Wilson Flagg's "Woods 

 and By-ways of New England." The traits of 

 that rural life which, in this emigrating and 

 manufacturing era, is becoming a thing of the 

 past, are delineated by Mr. Flagg with hearty 

 appreciation, while his intimate familiarity 

 with the habits of the forest-trees on the North 

 Atlantic slope gives truth and picturesqueness 

 to his descriptions, and adds force to his plea 

 for the preservation of forests from wanton de- 

 struction. Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, who 

 was felicitously introduced to the public by 

 "My Summer in a Garden," meets with a 

 warm welcome when coming to us with a vol- 

 ume of " Backlog Studies." Fireside literature 

 in our language is abundant, and seems to show 

 no signs of decay. Mr. Warner's " Studies " are 

 full of witty suggestion and humorous sur- 

 prises, on a solid substratum of shrewd com- 

 mon-sense. " The Poets and Poetry of Amer- 

 ica," by the late Rev. E. W. Griswold, when 

 it first appeared, stood comparatively alone 

 among such compilations for extent of re- 

 search and liberality of inclusiveness, perhaps 

 erring, as the amiable editor was inclined to 

 err, in the tendency to a too favorable estimate 

 of the merits of contemporary writers. It has 

 not been superseded, and now, revised and 

 brought down to the present time by E. H. 

 Stoddard, it is given a new lease of life. " Es- 

 says and Sketches," by the late George B. 

 Woods, is one of those collections which add 

 to their intrinsic merits the pathos of regret 

 for what seems the premature close of a prom- 

 ising career. The same remark applies to the 

 vivacious essays of the just-departed Mrs. Par- 

 ton, collected under the title, " Caper-Sauce, by 

 Fanny Fern." The "Pennsylvania Dutch" 

 and their curious manners are embalmed in an 

 entertaining volume, with the title above cited, 

 which opens to the general reader a peculiar 

 and primitive state of society. A work of sim- 

 ilar character, but having reference to a state of 

 things that has passed away, is " Black Eobes ; 

 or, Sketches of Ministers and Missionaries in 

 the Wilderness and on the Border" or what was 

 the border, Western Pennsylvania by Eobert P. 

 Nevin. It is racily done, though not without 

 some traces of theological antipathy. " The 

 Olden Time in New York," by the Et. Eev. W. 

 Ingraham Kip, draws a pleasing picture of so- 

 ciety and manners in the metropolis before the 

 levelling influence of trade and politics had 

 swept away the ancient aristocracy. "Yester- 

 days with Authors," by James T. Fields, relates, 

 with a little pardonable complacency and in a 

 manner to keep himself on the best terms with 

 his readers, incidents of his personal relations, 

 as a publisher, with Dickens, Thackeray, Haw- 

 thorne, Miss Mitford, and other eminent writers, 

 and transcribes numerous letters received 

 from them, not elsewhere published. 

 THEOLOGY AND EELIGION. In number, and 



