* * * * *

Among the “Notes” in the New York Nation of May 6th is the following: 

“In the new edition of Prescott’s complete works (Lippincott) we have remarked that the introduction to Charles V., so admirable for the time when it was written, is left untouched by the editor, not even the notes giving any intimation of the great progress made in the knowledge of the Middle Ages within the last hundred years.  The editor may have chosen to regard the work as a literary monument to be preserved as it stands, and certainly it would require very extensive if not entire recasting.”

There would seem to be some misapprehension at the bottom of these statements.  No one, we believe, has ever undertaken to edit Robertson’s History of Charles the Fifth.  Prescott appended to it a long “Account of the Emperor’s Life after his Abdication,” and for that reason it has been included in all subsequent editions of his works.  But no intimation has ever been given that the editor of Prescott’s histories had assumed the same office for Robertson.  If any one be engaged in editing Charles the Fifth, we can only wish him joy of the task.  We trust, however, he will not proceed on the plan suggested by the Nation, of “recasting” the work in whole or in part.  Such a process could hardly be considered as proper treatment of any literary production, which, whatever its demerits, should at least be subjected to no worse perversions than those of dishonest or incompetent criticism.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Macready’s Reminiscences, and Selections from his Diaries and Letters.  Edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., one of his Executors.  New York:  Macmillan & Co.

It is probable that this book will excite a degree of disappointment in many readers, who, knowing Macready’s position outside his profession, may naturally have expected to find in the record of his life ample and interesting details of his intercourse, often amounting to intimacy, with a great number of notable persons.  This expectation would without doubt have been gratified had the autobiography, which occupies a third of the volume and covers about the same proportion of the writer’s theatrical career, been carried to its close.  Macready was not one of those men who spring to eminence at a bound:  his powers were gradually and slowly developed, and owing partly to this fact, but partly also to unfavorable circumstances, the recognition of them was tardy and grudging.  For many years after his debut on the London boards he, who at a later period was almost disparaged as a pre-eminently intellectual actor, owed his chief successes to his performance of melodramatic parts like Rob Roy and William Tell, for which his mental as well as physical endowments were considered especially to qualify him.  When at length he had reached