This is a thorough and an exhaustive work, having for its subject that which must be of perpetual and increasing interest to all those colonists who, in different parts of the world, are founding nations which shall inherit the imperial language, and therefore will be entitled to claim a share in the literary glories of the mother-land.  Professor Craik is favorably known as the author of works that depend chiefly upon industry for their worth; and this elaborate production must add to the esteem in which his learned labors have long been held in many quarters.  He has left no portion of his subject untouched, but affords to his readers a full and lucid account of every part of it, according to the materials that are at the command of scholars.  If defective on any points, it is owing to the want of authorities.  His survey of English literature includes not only all writers of the first class, but all who can be regarded as of any considerable distinction; and he has noticed many names which have no pretension to be considered as even of second-rate importance, but concerning which general readers may be curious, though their curiosity may not carry them so far as to induce them to hunt up their works.  A book of reference, such as this book must be to most of those who shall use it, is bound to make mention of writers whose names are of rare occurrence, but who had their parts, though they may have been insignificant ones, in building up their country’s literature.  Of the great writers, Professor Craik devotes but little space to Shakspeare and Milton, because their works are in everybody’s hands; while from Chaucer and Spenser, Swift and Burke, ample specimens are given, the author assuming that their writings are but little read.  Indeed, he declares that the great poets and other writers even of the last generation have already faded from the view of the most numerous class of the educated and reading public,—­and that scarcely anything is generally read except the publications of the day.  He correctly remarks that no true cultivation can be acquired by reading nothing but the current literature.  This, he says, “is the extreme case of that entire ignorance of history, or of what had been done in the world before we ourselves came into it, which has been affirmed, not with more point than truth, to leave a person always a child.”  No doubt; but we think the learned Professor overrates the extent of that neglect of the literature of the past of which he complains,—­for the editions of the works of writers long dead, published in the last twenty years, are numerous, and we know that books are not printed for people who do not care for them.  The number of readers of contemporary works is small, if we compare those readers with the population of any given country; but there are more readers now than could be found in any other age, not only of the books of the day, but of the books of the past.

This work combines the history of English Literature with the history of the English Language.  The author’s scheme of the course is, as described by himself, extremely simple, and rests, not upon arbitrary, but upon natural or real distinctions, giving us the only view of the subject that can claim to be regarded as of a scientific character.  This part of his work will be found very valuable, as it popularizes a subject which has few attractions for most readers.