The Press.
London, England, 1854-09-16 00:00:00

iitraturt.

The Annotated Edition of the English Poets.
Edited by Robert Bell. Poetical Works of
,Sir Thomas Wyatt. London : J. W. Parker
and Son.
As was anticipated by those conversant with
literary affairs, the progress of the struggle
in the East has distracted the attention of the
reading public, and consequently damped the
enterprise of the great bibliopoles, except in
books illustrative of our " foreign affairs."
The season which has just closed has, there-
fore, been barren of novelties in our domestic
literature, and some important works have
been held back from publication until a more
favourable period. It results, by a necessary
consequence, that some of the serial editions
of the time have attracted more notice than
would have been given to them. With a great
scarcity of original works issuing from the
press, and owing also to merits of its own,
" The Annotated Edition of the English
Poets " is just now an object of considerable
interest.
The want of such a work has long been felt.
The public do not require an expensive edition
with wire-wove paper, brilliant typography,
and splendid binding ; the wealthy do not
need any collected edition of the poets, as they
can fill their library-shelves with the expen-
sive copies of our standard classics ; but a
good popular edition of the poets, superin-
tended by an experienced author and pub-
lished at a moderate price, is really a great
boon to general readers. We have from the
first watched with interest the progress of this
" annotated edition." As our readers are
aware, we have praised it liberally, and we
have freely censured also when we thought
that there was imperfection. In doing both
we were animated by no personal prejudice,
and, as the terms of our notices show, our
comments were made with the entire inde-
pendence that we trust will always be our rule.
In the praise which we accorded we are happy
to find that we have been seconded by some
of our ablest contemporaries (amongst whom
we may mention the Examiner), and we again
specially advert to this publication, as we are
sorry to see that a most unfair and ungenerous
attack has been made on it in an organ whose
censure ought to be more discriminately be-
stowed in proportion to its great respon-
sibility.

The competence of an editor for a great
serial undertaking like that before us is to be
Measured in reference to the whole publication,
and not upon detached portions of the work.
Petty verbal scholarship, and minute correc-
tions of the press, would not compensate for
the absence of acute comments, manly criti-
cism, and apposite illustrations. These latter,
also, must be written with terseness, and must
not be a merely idle parade of far-sought but
irrelevant knowledge. Mistakes must be ex
peeted in any prolonged work, and it would be
hard to exact that, in so burdensome an un-
dertaking as that of issuing monthly volumes,
Mr. Bell's pen should be free from those
errors which meet our eyes in the pages of
Bentley's Milton and Johnson's Shakspeare.
The last great name, indeed, suggests the
necessity of our being reasonable in our ex-
pectations from " editors " of books. We
respect the talents and attainments of Mr.
Collier and Mr. Charles Knight, but we would
decline to accept the literary dictum of either
of those gentlemen on the value of his fellow-
commentator's labours ; and we may observe
that a recent and most able American writer
On Shakspeare, Mr. Grant White, has told us
to look for an accurate text of the great poet
only to the Rev. Alexander Dyce ! Now, we
should be sorry to assail any of the accom-
plished " editors " just named for those mis-
takes incidental to undertakings where even
the profoundest research and the most perse-
vering industry are often found at fault. And
why should a different rule be applied to Mr.
Bell ? Are we to expect that his edition of the
poets, brought out every month, requiring
Various kriowledgo to illustrate writers of
different eras, is to be entirely free from lite-
rary blt,mishee, when Pope, Hanmer, Warbur-