It is not too high praise to say that Mr. Brooks has overcome all these difficulties without the sacrifice of a single characteristic of Richter’s genius.  We have the sense and passion unmutilated.  The translation is accurate, and also bold.  By the comparison of a few test-passages with the original, Mr. Brooks’s adroit and patient labor appears clearly.  We desire to pay him the meed of our respect and gratitude.  Few readers of “Titan” will appreciate the toil which has secured them this new sensation of becoming intimate with “Jean Paul the Only.”  It is new, because, notwithstanding several books of Jean Paul have been already translated, “Titan” is the most vigorous and exhaustive book he wrote.  He poured his whole fiery and romantic soul into it.  It may be said that all the fine and humane elements of the revolutionary period in which he lived appear in this book,—­the religious feeling, the horror of sensuality, the hatred of every kind of cant, the struggle for definite knowledge out of a confusing whirl of man’s generous sentiments all broken loose, the tendency to worship duty and justice, and the Titanic extravagance of a “lustihood,” both of youth and emotion, which threatens, in Alexander’s temper, to appropriate the world.  All this is admirably expressed in the Promethean title of the book.  We do not think that it can be profitably read, or with an intelligent respect for its great author, unless we recall the period, the state of politics, religion, domestic life, the new German age of thought which was rising, with ferment, amid uncouth gambolling shapes of jovial horn-blowing fellows, from the waves.  He is the divinity who owns a whole herd of them.  As we sit to read, let the same light fall on the page in which it was composed, and there will appear upon it the genius which is confined to no age or clime, and addresses every heart.

The Works of Rufus Choate, with a Memoir of his Life.  By SAMUEL GILMAN BROWN, Professor in Dartmouth College.  In Two Volumes.  Boston:  Little, Brown, & Co.

In estimating the claims of any biographical work we must bear in mind the difficulties of the subject, the advantages which the writer enjoys, and the disadvantages under which he labors.  The life, genius, and character of Mr. Choate present a stimulating, but not an easy task to him who essays to delineate them.  We have read of a man who had taught his dog to bite out of a piece of bread a profile likeness of Voltaire; it was not more difficult to draw a caricature of Mr. Choate, but to paint him as he was requires a nice pencil and a discriminating touch.  The salient traits were easily recognized by all.  The general public saw in him a man who flung himself into his cases with the fervor and passion of a mountain-torrent, whose eloquence was exuberant and sometimes extravagant, who said quaint and brilliant things with a very grave countenance, and whose handwriting was picturesquely illegible.  We verily believe that Mr. Choate’s