The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-14 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Lectures on the history of England. By William
Longman. Lecture V. Longman and Co.

The first volume of Mr.Longman's History of Eng-
land—he himself still modestly calling it '° Lectures
on the History of England"—is now completed. It
has grown up slowly and steadily during the last few
years, Lecture after Lecture. Accordingly, in fact,
as these same Lectures have, one after another, been
delivered orally at Chorleywood. Gradually accu-
mulating, as the printed pages have done, in this
way, they have come at last to number up, in
Vol. a goodly aggregate of 459 altogether.
From the earliest times, from "Before the Romans,''
Mr. Longman's survey of our annals has come down
to nearly the middle of the fourteenth century.
His Fifth Lecture presents to us a succinct epitome,
end a readily appreciable estimate, of the Reign of
li!ng Edward the Second, that reign extending
over an interval of a good score of years—namely,
from A.D. 1307 to AD. 1327. Scattered through the
letter-press of this Lecture, as through its prede-
cessors, are several very curious woodcut Mastro-
, ions, one of these depicting the two-handed sword
tt Hawthornden, said to have belonged to King
Robert Bruce, quaint old claymores, and lochabar-
.xes, to say nothing of a map of Scotland in the
14th century, and a plan of the ever-memorable battle
of Bannockburn. Hardly ever have we seen a more
clearly arranged, a more searching, or a more ad-
mirably useful Index than the one here copiously
given at the close of this first Volume of the Lec•
tures. it is a complete synopsis of the contents of
the volume it is appended to—as complete, as In.
dices always should be, if deemed worthy of com-
piling at all. The pleasantest thing to us, however,
in all this last instalment of the First Vulume of

these Lectures of Mr. Longman, upon our national
IliFtory, is the manly, outspoken, admirably-
well written Preface contained in it. A
Preface we take to be at all times a
rather difficult thing to write—judiciously, Mr.
Longman's Preface, however, is really, in some
respects, a kind of model Preface in its way. It
is penned throughout in perfect good taste. It
has a personal interest about it, as all Prefaces

necessarily must have : and yet, in spite of that,
it is not in the least egotistical. It is in no way
deprecatory of honest criticism—on the contrary,
by the tone of it, that criticism it seems earnestly
to court. Its opening words of explanation no
one will read with more interest or more zest,
we should imagine, than that Veteran Author
and Publisher, who has also himself written, upon
a yet larger scale, the records of our native
land, Mi. Charles Knight ! An interest and a zest
certain to be participated in hardly less, we
should sappose, by another of the people's
publishers further north—author as well
as publisher—by that thoughtful scholar we mean
who has the reputation of having penned the
•‘ Vestiges of Creation." Turning here, however,
to the very opening paragraph of I‘ll._ Longman's
Preface, we read:—"I feel that some explanatio❑
is needed of the reasons which have induced me

'o step out of my province as a publisher, and en-
croach on the domains of authors ; for, indepen-
dently of a natural feeling, akin to jealousy, which
ei•her author or publisher must feel if one or the

other attempt to combine the two vocations, it is
dear that they cannot, as a general principle, be
united with advantage. I trust, however," adds
Mr. Longman with dry humour, " that authors will
forgive me, and not revenge themselves by turning
publishers. There is, nevertheless, some advantage
in a publisher dabbling in literature, for it shows
him tte difficu'ties with which an author has to con-

'end—the labour which is indispensable to produce
a work whit❑ may be relied on--And it increases
the sympathy which should, and which in these
days does, exist between author awl publisher."
He then goes on to relate bow it chanced that he
found himself, about eight years ago, committed
to the responsibility of lecturing upon The History
of England. The circumstances which caused him,
he says, to undertake the task at all, were solely and
simply attributable to his neighbourly solicitude to
forward the interests cf a society established no
further back than 1855, for the improvement of
the labouring classes in and around the little village
of Chorleywood, down in Hertfordshire. A year
or two after the establishment of that homely asso-
ciation, Mr. Longman appears to have been incited
by the loc3l incumbent, to the Delivery of a course
of Lectures on English History before the
intelligent, though but poorly educated, agri-
i3ulturists of the neighbourhood. The Reve.
rend Mr. Scrivener, the clergyman in ques-
;ion, to whom this fortunate suggestion (as it
has proved in its results) presented itself, was him-
self induced apparently to throw out the hint by
the success of a lecture delivered in 1857 by Mr•
Lon gm an, before the Chorleywood Association, upon
the suhj• et of Switzerland. "In an easy moment,',
says Mr. Longman in his Preface, "I promised"—
promised, that is, the delivery of the suggested
course of Lectures on the History of England. And
here, in this substantial " Volume One," is proof po-
sitive of the lucky thought of the incumbent of
Chorleywood, and of tha earnest and conscien-
tious labours of the Author-Publisher, that have
resulted from that lucky thought or suggestion.
Addressing himself originally to plain thinking and
(fur the most part even it might be said) unlettered
Englishmen, Mr. Longman has written his book
hroughout in clear and simple language. The fact
that he has done so imparts to the work one of its
chiefest charms—namely its exceeding lucidity and
perspicuity both in style and arrangement.