A Study of Hawthorne. By George Parsons Lathrop. (Boston: Osgood.) In this little volume a young American poet gives a very exhaustive sketch of the life and works of an author for whom, in his boundless admiration, he does not claim any honours less than the highest, and whose name he does not hesitate to couple with Shakspere's. Considering the want of a sense of proportion which is implied by this initial assumption, it is really remarkable that his study when it is analytic, not comparative, should be as acute and critical as it is. The relative position and value of Hawthorne's successive works; the nature of their apparent and essential contents; the complex action of external influences on the novelist's mind—all these things are judged with a nice precision that leaves very little to be desired. The deepest students of Hawthorne are not likely to quarrel with Mr. Lathrop when he asserts that the "Marble Faun" is the supreme effort of its author's imagination, the most subtle, the most ingenious, the most penetrative of his astonishing romances. It seems that Hawthorne was exceedingly unwilling that his biography should be written, and Mr. Lathrop is far too pious to outrage a single wish of his idol. He most carefully warns us that this volume is not a Life of Hawthorne, but we may assure our readers that, for all but those for whom the essence of biography is pertinent and scandalous tittle-tattle, this book will be found a sufficient and excellent biography, in spite of its author's disclaimer. Several of the points in which the conduct of Hawthorne was made the subject of unfriendly criticism are here fully cleared up. The matter of Mr. Pierce's biography, followed, as it immediately was, by the reward of the best place in the new president's gift, is still somewhat puzzling, but more so, perhaps, on account of dissimilarity of national custom than on any recognised code of public morality. With the one reservation at which we have already hinted, we are able conscientiously to recommend this book as the finest tribute yet laid at the shrine of the first of American writers. The style is limpid and pleasing, and interpenetrated by a tone of vaporous reverie which is quite in keeping with the theme. Sept. 15to76

Sent to Mr. Channing. Don't you think it much better than the English edition? — and at left, then, a quarter of the price!

I have written to Mr. Lathrop to ask him to send me a copy of the new edition of the P.S. It does not come to hand; I will let them know it when I go to London.

Nathaniel Hawthorne to Henry W. Bright.