The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-17 00:00:00

Mr. Bohn's Volumes for November.

The Prose TVo?ks of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
One vol., pp. 580. Henry G. l3ohn.
An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance, 4•c.
By John Foster. One vol., pp. 394. Henry G.
Bohn.

Although Mr. Bohn, during this last quarter of
a century, has become the possessor by purchase of
shoals upon shoals of valuable copyrights, and
month by month, volume by volume, has re-issued
old standard works as additions to a whole series of
Libraries—he still contrives, in some mysterious
manner, to have one or two thoroughly well-known
English classics, to send forth thus from the press,
by twos and by threes, with the magazines.
In this way, but very recently, as we
took occasion to notice at the time, he
has published in a cheap and beautiful
form Miss Mitford's charming Sketches of " Our
Village," a cluster of the famous " Essays" of Jobn
Foster, the friend of Robert Hail, Mr. Russell
Hind's Popular outline of " Astronomy," and seve-
ral of the choicest " Fairy Tales" of those Brothers
Grimm beloved alike by philosophers and by chil-
dren. Now one of his libraries, now another of them,
is:selected by Mr. Bohn for these monthly additions
—libraries as varied in character as the Standard,
the Scientific, the Philosophical, the Illustrated,
the Classical, the Antiquarian. The most recent
among these multifarious and always well-selected
republications, are the two volumes now demand-
ing some notice at our hands, the volumes issued
with the magazines for this current month of
November. They are both old familiar favourites.
Ono of them a collection of three lovely stories—a
volume complete and perfect in itself as a collection.
The other being a continuation of the serial re-issue,
thus, in occasional volumes, of the finest essays
penned by one of the most able and brilliant among
our modern essayists: a writer here already referred
to—John Foster, the great dissenting Essayist, one
of the loftiest intellects among the most eminent of
the Dissenters. The addition now made to his
writings in the shape of this new and most accept-
able edition—an edition calculated very consider-
ably to extend the popularity already acquired by
them in their original form among thinking
men—is, ii not apparently at the first glance parti
cularly attractive, at any rate certain to be found upon
examination, intrinsically, most judicious. The
Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance, in truth
stood, beyond any doubt of it, high among Foster's
masterpieces. It is a great lay sermon—wonder-
fully eloquent at times—and throughout most
impressive. The text, as we may almost call it,
prefixed to this lay sermon is from Hosea; run-
ning briefly thus, "My people are destroyed
through lack of knowledge." And, how strikingly
Mr. Foster expatiates upon this awful theme, no
one can even faintly conjecture who has not
carefully followed out his remarkable argument.
ftie purport of it comes even to the
more reflective reader almost like a revelation. It
seems as though, until Foster painted the terrible
truths sent to us, that we had not realized even
partially the fearful burden of ignorance weighing
down the great masses of the population. But
yesterday, as it were, that wide-spread ignorance
was, with the generality, far more tearful, of course,
than it is now-a-days, even in exceptionally dark
and neglected localities. It is an ignorance that
has been plombed by Parliamentary investigations
Bluebooks have recorded its magnitude, its
prevalence, its blackness, its profundity. It
is in no way an evil, vague, uncertain, ima-
ginary, supposititious. It is as real and afflicting as
the poverty accompanying it. It is a " darkness that
may be felt !" How large the audience is already won
for himself by the gifted writer of these pages we
may recognise in the terse and striking intimation
upon the title-page, " Twentieth Thousand." Mr.
Bohn's New Edition, it should be remarked, more. -
over, is one that has been carefully revised, and iene
some parts considerably enlarged. their Pro
Works" of Professor Longfellow need for.
eof
acceptance in any form no one BYllEabnigiand
introduction. Their popularity
"'erica : and
will, with their popularity in
A'lithe welcome
in both countries almost equals
accorded to the poetical workseoiar interesting to
lug writer. It is always
e
especially
and pastures new',
follow a poet into "the fresh fields same charm
but more partiou-
olafrpl
prose
yroisseictoemopwoshietn the ion of any kind;
happens to be of an
" Alciph•
ron," Charles Lana
imaginative character. Moore's
"Rosamond Gray"—sweet
little home tales like
the latter, glorious raids
into the Great Classic Fairyland. like the former :
even casual ventures of that kind are always
found to be most acceptable to those who
care for the poet at all. The grandest
instance of all, of course, grew up for the masses
first, no doubt, unconsciously, and afterwards for
a long while but very doubtfully,.by reason of the
thick and, at the outset, impenetrable veil of the
anonymous hiding from view the identity of the
Great Unknown. This was, namely, when
Walter Scott the Poet became the grandest
prose writer of fiction that had ever lived,
the Wizard Romarieht of the North, the inaugu.