BOOKS & AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2372, 30 January 1915, Page 5

BOOKS & AUTHORS.

$Y IlBKR.) BOOK OF THE DAY. BOHN'S POPULAR LIBRARY. Ono of the most useful of the many sories of reprints which nowadays provide boOMovers with so rich an intellectual entertainment for tho ransom of a shilling a volume is Bohn s Popular Library, of which Messrs. George Bell and Sons are the publishers. The war has not, I, am glad to seo, prevented the regular issue of new "batches" in this series, copies of volumes 61 to 80, published in London early in November, reaching me through Messrs. Whitcombe and Tombs. Biography, philosophy, poetry, and belle lottres are all well represented, as is also what might be termed classic fiction. "Plutarch's Lives," in George Long's much-esteemed translation, Bhould find many new readers, and a selection from the "Letters of Horaco Walpole" provides a delightful inside view of the political and social life of the eighteenth century. As Byron said, \V alpole's Letters are "incomparable" for their wit, their humour, tho marvellous insight into character thoy display. Never was there more entertaining reading. A famous English classic, Sir Thomas Mote's "Utopia," is supplemented in this edition by Roper s "Life of More," and useful notes are contributed by Mr. George Sampson. Coleridge's "Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare, and Milton and Other 'English Poets is another notable addition to this excellent series. "In tho domain of Shakespearean commentary, Coleridge," to quote tho late H. D. Traill in his volume on Coleridge • in "The English Men of Letters" series, "is absolute King." Poetry is represented in the new batch' by a reprint of the excellent Aldine edition (complete in one volume) of Keats's poems, chronologically arranged, and edited with a memoir by Lord Houghton; Cary's . version of Dante's "Divine Comedy," to which Mrs. M. Egerton Castle furnishes an introduction and some useful notes ,* and H. A. J. Muaro's translation of "Lucretius," edited, with an interesting little biography of Munro, by Mr. J. D. Duff, of Cambridge. German literature is represented by "The Selected Essays of Schopenhauer," edited by Ernest Belfort Bas; and Lessing's "La'okoon." Three famous American writers have also been drawn upon. The delicate fancy and whimsical humour of Washington Irving were ne* sr better displayed than in his delightful sketches of English country life, in "Bracebridge Hall." Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Transformation," originally entitled "The Marble Faun," will come as a novelty to many who only know this writer by "The Scarlet Letter" and "The House of the Seven Gables" ; and "Tho Essays of Edgar Allan Poe," prefaced by an exceptionally interesting biographical and critical sketch by Hardress O'Grady, should also be welcomed by those: who have read Poe's betterknown mystery stories. Under the heading of fiction the new batch includes Fielding's "Amelia" (twe volumes); Smollett's "Adventures of Roderick Random" (two volumes), specially interesting just now through the novelist's realistic pictures of life in the British Navy in the eighteenth century; tho "Eastern Tales" of Wilhelm Banff, which are in their own way almost as good as tho famous "Arabian Nights," and, finally, tho two concluding volumes of the Bolin edition of the "Nights," in Lane's translation, which still, despite the vogue of the versions of Mr. John Payne and Sir Richard Burton, enjoys a well-deserved popularity, being specially adapted for family reading, whilst at the same timo the author's notes are acknowledged to be almost encyclopaedic in their references to and explanations of Arabic customs and beliefs. In print and binding the new "Bohns" are fully equal to the high standard set oil the production of preceding batches. Tho New Zealand price per volume is fifteenpence.