Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), September 27, 1845, vol. 2, no. 12, p. ???, col. ?

[page 179, column 2:]

The Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Arnold, D. D., Late Head-Master of Rugby School and Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. First American Edition, with Nine Additional Essays not Included in the English Collection. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

This is a well printed octavo of more than 500 pages, and is based upon the volume of “Arnold's Miscellaneous Works” published in London, June 1845; in which, however there were many important omissions as well as redundancies. In the American edition (now issued) the former are supplied and the latter avoided. The “Fragment on the Church”; the “Essay on Church and State” and the “Christian Life, its Course, its Hindrances and its Helps” will be found in this the American, but not in the English edition. The “Christian Life” is, in fact, absolutely necessary for the proper understanding of many other essays, in which allusion or reference is made to it. Besides these papers, we have, in the way of addition, “The Church of England”; “Early Roman History”; “Faith and Reason”; “The Oxford Malignants and Dr. Hampden”; “The Sixth Chapter of the Gospel by John”; “Tracts for the Times”; and “Tradition” — the whole including 256 pages, or one half the present volume.

The articles omitted are merely ephemeral compositions never meant for preservation — letters from old newspapers, and other similar matter of a purely local or temporary character, but constituting nearly one fourth of the English edition, in which the main object appears to have been the making of a book sufficiently bulky to sell at a certain price.

Some other improvements have been effected; as regards for example, the arrangement of matter; and the work, upon the whole, cannot fail to be highly acceptable to the admirers of Dr. Arnold. It is indeed an indispensable sequel to the “Life and Correspondence” and the “Lectures on Modern History.”