REVIEWS — THE BOOKSELLER. 199 



we learn that its rival, and senior, the Literary Gazette, is — or is 

 supposed to be — under the editorial conduct of Mr. Shirley Brooks. 

 The latter learned editor, — if we mistake not, — personally or by 

 deputy, first recorded recently the re-interment of John Hunter's 

 remains, in "Westminster Abbey, 'between the graves of Be^t Jonson 

 aud WilJcie ! This was too good a catch for his critical brother ; 

 and- here accordingly is a specimen of the literary amenities between 

 those knights of the critical quill whom the Trade periodical would 

 drag from behind their prescriptive curtain of anonymity : 



" The world of fine sentiment has been shocked by reports in the newspapers 

 that the gentlemen who have found the bones of John Hunter in one grave and 

 deposited them in another, ' between the bodies of Wilkie and Jonson,' have been 

 tossing the skull that shaped ' Volpone ' and ' The Alchemist ' from hand to hand. 

 The words on Shakspeare's tomb have naturally risen to every reverential and 

 poetic lip. But we dare say the skull of Jonson is as mythical as the body of 

 "Wilkie — aud, perhaps, the bones of Hunter. The body of Wilkie, as Capt. Joy 

 can testify, lies in the bed of the Mediterranean. Gentlemen who know that 

 Wilkie lies in a particular spot of Westminster must be good authority (very 

 good) for any particular skull being that of Ben Jonson." 



The world at large, and none more so than the American literary 

 world, has a keen hankering after such personations of the anony- 

 naous editorial or critical we. A learned American editor recently 

 achieved more notoriety than he aimed at, by an indignant assault on 

 the Eev. Sydney Smith, (!) for an article in the Edinburgh Review, 

 less complimentary to the Great Eepublic than the patriotic editor 

 was prepared to accept, even from the pen of Peter Plymley. Messrs. 

 Leonard, Scott & Co., of New York, the American re-printers of the 

 British Reviews, in their " Circular to Editors with whom we ex- 

 change," issued during the present season, still name Professor 

 Eraser, of Edinburgh University, as the editor of the North British, 

 in ignorance seemingly of the feud of orthodoxy and independence, 

 in the midst of which he threw up his editorial pen. Private rumor 

 hints to us of its being now wielded — after being in commission for 

 some time, — by the Eev. Mr. Dun of Torphichen, an amiable country 

 clergyman of a scientific and literary turn ; but who has yet his 

 spurs to win iu the literary arena. Sir Cornwall Lewis appears to 

 be the latest known editor of the Edinburgh Revieio, in IS ew York 

 circles — in the west, as we have seen, the responsibility still devolves 

 on Sydney Smith. Lockhart would seem to be the last editor of the 

 London Quarterly heard of by its New York re-printers. The 



