Text: H. C. Watson (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), October 18, 1845, vol. 2, no. 15, p. ??

[page 227, column 2, continued:]

Wiley & Putnam's Library of Choice Reading. No. XXVI. Selections from the Works of Taylor, Latimer, Hall, Milton, Barrow, South, Brown, Fuller and Bacon. By Basil Montagu, Esq., M. A. First American from the Fifth London Edition.

This is a book we may safely take on our faith in the good taste and discretion of the American editor. He has been a diligent laborer in the vineyard of old English Literature for many years; and we have no doubt he has a sincere pleasure in seeing the public coming round to the manlier standard of the earlier writers — These selections, we need scarcely say, are well made. [page 228:] They are from the picked greatness of English prose; the bounty, the vigor, the spirit and breadth of the old giant-race of authors, who were men and wrote for men. They have no fear, but a full faith in the generous fecundity of nature, and teem on every hand with expression and truth and life. The passages from the modern Edward Irving, given in the notes (which are to the purpose, and copious) are in a like temper, and abide the comparison without loss of credit to the eccentric divine.

At some other day, when our pages are less crowded, it will give us pleasure to spread some of these choice selections before our readers — if they are not before us by a resort to the publishers, and a mastery of the whole feast in advance of our grudging convenience.