NugT Liiterarim; or, Brief Essays on Literary, Social, and other
Themes. By William Mathews. (Sampson Low and Co.)—Mr. Mathews informs us that he was at one time librarian of the Young Men's Library Association at Chicago, and from first to last this collection of essays reveals its American origin. The author, who appears to have read a great deal, has a fund of gossip at his command which may amuse the idle reader; but so short are many of these essays that it would be more accurate to call them newspaper paragraphs. They have no distinction of style or freshness of thought to recommend them ; the book, how- ever, is wholesome in purpose and is wholly free from the unpardonable fault of dullness. No one, we imagine, will under- take to read it consecutively, but it may be possible to find some amusement from its pages in odd moments. Mr. Mathews is not always accurate. He has forgotten "David Copperfield," or he would have remembered that it was Mr. Dick who did not want to swing a cat, and not "a celebrated English divine." Oliver Goldsmith did not "pen an animated romance on Animated Nature' at just shillings enough per sheet to keep the catchpolls from his door," since eight hundred guineas was not a mean sum to receive for such a compilation. And so far was Goldsmith's illustrious friend Johnson from seeing no merit in Gray's "Elegy," that he said" it abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo."
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