It is singular enough that the last issue of his own volumes should contain no memorial of him, especially as he is, by one more work at least, known to the world. Then, again, has that issue enjoyed any other editorial care than the publisher's? But this query we venture to answer for ourselves, almost as soon as put, in the negative; it must in faithfulness be said, the signs of a hurried preparation are unmistakable. - We are not about to analyze Bohn's edition of Gorton, or Gorton's work in general, having just finished that office for another, which has been for us a task sufficient at one time, and indubitably therefore for the reader. But as we never wish our sweeping condemnation, like that just uttered, to be taken upon trust, let us bring the former to the test merely of a small geographic circle, and of less than twenty years in time. Let us look at its muster-roll of our American worthies for those seventeen years that had elapsed from the appearance of the second edition (1833). With 1850 for the imprint on its title-page, and showing there the fair promise, brought down to the present time, what is to be said of a "Universal Biography" unenriched with either of the names subjoined, Randolph, Dane, Wirt, Marshall, Livingston, Noah Webster, Jackson, Story, Kent, R. H. Wilde, Wheaton, and the younger Adams? Our list, too, with one only exception, it will be seen, is confined to civilians and statesmen. Will any man be bold enough to guess who are the departed that, during the interval referred to, make up for the absence of the above names? Perhaps there are none; for the totality of new American names in the edition of Bohn is fifteen* only; being about the eighth part of the obituary of those same years which our record counts worthy of remembrance and transmission. Even of this pittance, three or four names at least there are, at which an intelligent man among ourselves must smile perforce; their title to an inch of space in a Dictionary solely national being greatly to be questioned. Others, it is true, may assert far better pre * The American names, as found in the second edition of Gorton, are exactly ninety; in an impartial edition, brought down to 1850, could that number be quadrupled? tensions, Patrick Henry, De Witt Clinton, Bowditch, Chan ning, Allston, well worthy of all the letter-press they have contrived to win. That is not much to say, since the genius and gifts of the last-named are imprisoned in eight lines. Some would put this down to the score of foreign disdain. That by no means follows. On the other side of the water an example presents itself of more monstrous disproportion yet. Francis, Lord Jeffrey, Charles Fourier, Mehemet Ali, and Daniel O'Connell fail to make up together the complement of a Gorton page, by more than twenty lines. Either of the four might claim the whole space three times told, taking, as is but fair, the standard of copiousness observed in the earlier editions. But put the last issue of Gorton's volumes by incompetent hands aside, - the good opinion of the original work, referred to in the London periodical spoken of, may well enough be indorsed by us. What book of the kind should upon the whole take place by its side? Lempriere and Watkins, the authorities for the first quarter of the century, are becoming obsolete; have probably ceased to be reprinted now. Maunder's "Biographical Treasury," a bulky duodecimo reissued every three to five years, has many good points; but its dimensions suffice not at all to meet the public want. Besides, it assumes too great an interest for us in the generations just gone by, and with which we have had some concern, over those a century or two past, and graduates their space accordingly. William A. Becket gives his name to another collection of the sort (3 vols. 8vo), which we have met with once or twice only, and dateless, though from internal marks clearly of about the year 1834-35. The head of Lord Althorpe for its frontispiece, perhaps denotes him as its patron. But obscurity is round about it. The reviews, one and all, ignore its existence; and it has been a lost labor to ferret out anything of the author beyond his name. We may add, the work cites no authorities, divides with strange inequality its pages between the two halves of the alphabet, and with very dubious wisdom brings under its notice a number of living names. The Georgian Æra (4 vols. royal 8vo) is British only, and serves for a single dynasty, that does not cover a century and a quarter. The Scottish Biographical Dictionary by the Chamberses (4 vols. 8vo) is equally narrow. The department of Biography in the Encyclopædia Americana is too select to supersede the need of other help. Under the auspices of Lord Brougham's Society (so called), a new Dictionary of the sort was commenced, edited by George Long. At the close of the seventh volume (1842-44), as we have already said, it was still vainly striving to wind up the letter A; and its own winding up at that point was mourned by none. Its leading hobby, if our memory serves us, was the reviving an incredible number of Oriental Rabbis, who had, in every sense, slept till then, and whom no such well-meant, mistaken kindness could by any possibility keep from slumbering still. The collection ostensibly of Hugh James Rose makes an imposing array of volumes (12 vols. 8vo), and it was at one time extensively imported by our leading Boston book-firm. But has it not a very suspicious look, that the three opening letters of the alphabet monopolize just half of the entire work? Suppose now but simple justice to be done to this one eighth part (and we engage within those letters to find a goodly list of omissions), what sort of justice remains for the other seven eighths? Finally, the name of Mr. Rose in the front of these volumes is an unsolved enigma. That gentleman died at Florence near the close of 1838, three years, certainly, prior to the date of the very earliest of the series; and it is be be noted, that the Annual Register of 1839, sketching his life and character, sums up his productions with no allusion whatever to the above work. With none of these, then, need Gorton decline comparison. But his superiority is not such as to leave them out of sight; and poorly will he abide the standard, if it comes to that, of ideal excellence. His omissions upon our list, running back from the stand-point of 1833, probably count up to sixteen hundred or more. Precise enumeration in such things is neither important nor possible. A fair proportion of these excite our special wonder, the names being in some, it may be in most, of the other collections; while, as to a few notable cases, the common plea of human imperfection willNO. 173. VOL. LXXXIII. 29 scarcely excuse the oversight. Montrose, "saved as by fire," is thought of just in time for the Supplement. But the lordly, extended family of Guise is passed in silence (though their rivals, the Condés, receive imperfect, and the Orleans house fuller, justice); while Potemkin's name, possibly the first — a few royalties aside in the annals of Northern Europe, is sought in vain; and even thus, proh pudor! is it too with our own Hamilton, the most precocious, most diversely endowed, and most deplored man that illustrates our American annals. But who would credit the number of names, neither obscure nor mean, unknown to the whole tribe of such compilations? Every doubt, in view of that record, would vanish (has it lingered even till now?) as to what servile copyists, without exception, this class of book-makers are. Tell us who can, of a work in this line that was the fruit of an early direction of mind in that quarter, and of the slow accretion of materials in the course of multifarious reading? Yet what decent pretence to the title is any "Universal Biography" likely to have, that did not so begin? It were not amiss, after the special intimacy which one's studies have for a season created with this or that profession (say artists, comedians, booksellers, heroes of the ocean), or, in lieu of it, with some section of modern history, to go to the dictionaries, while the memory is crowded with names. There can be no better touchstone; let him who applies it mark the amount of lost painstaking. Let him thus try the generation that preceded the Restoration, the age of the opening troubles of Charles, the civil wars, and the Protectorate. What other has been so well exhausted by our contemporaries, to say nothing of those that went before? Let us now take out Cromwell, Strafford, Laud, Hampden, and Vane, as the most fruitful lives of that age. There then come to the very van a larger number yet (the reader wants not our help to recall them), of most of whom Doctors Aikin and Kippis, Tooke, and Alexander Chalmers, with all their successors downward, have clearly never heard. Like those distant stars whose light, say the astronomers, ever travelling, may never yet have reached us, so the fame of these men of lofty mark seems to The be still on the way to the ears of these sage collectors. authors of the vaunted Biographie Universelle have no better ground of complacency. Indeed, of that work we must hold the great characteristic to be its intense, invidious nationality. A Du Guesclin or Turenne will be certain to be found in their pages, and the ground he covers, a match for any five great English captains. The aspiring Guises make twelve or fifteen articles at least, embracing a large portion of a volume. We have occasionally, after a vain chase elsewhere, alighted upon our object here. But these fortunate cases had ever the recommendation of being Frenchmen. Thus the leaders in the several risings of La Vendée, in the field-details- the most engaging portion by far of the revolutionary story — have justice done them in the Biographie Universelle, and only there. The collections, for the most part, do indeed duly record the first La Roche Jaquelein, as a sort of revived Sidney or Bayard. But it is almost a solitary exception, (unless, with one or two of them, Charette or Stofflet have found a place,) and he becomes, in a degree beyond historic justice, the central figure of that most romantic strife. But we are warned to close; and no better finale to our article can there be, than the significant words in the "Notes and Queries," spoken of one of the strangest notorieties of the period touched upon a few sentences back, "He will have a place hereafter in some Biographical Dictionary; of course we mean, whenever one shall appear that is worthy of the name." ART. III.—1. Zaidee; a Romance. Boston: John P. Jewett & Co. 1856. 2. Tolla; a Tale of Modern Rome. Boston: Whittemore, Niles, & Hall. By EDMOND ABOUT. 1856. 3. Rachel Gray; a Tale founded on Fact. ANAGHI. New York: D. Appleton & Co. By JULIA KAV 1856. THE works of popular novel-writers follow one another in such quick succession, that an immense amount of reading |