CURRENT LITERAT URE.
*,,,* We regret much that by an error in transcribing the name of the English publisher of Mr. Grant White's book on the Life and Genius of Shakespeare, in our review of last week, Mr. Tritbner's name was sub- stituted for Messrs. Sampson Low and Co., who actually publish it.
Dalziels' Illustrated Arabian Nights' Entertainments. The text revised and emendated throughout, by H. W. Daleken, Ph.D., with upwards of
two hundred illustrations, engraved by the Brothers Dalziel. (Ward,
Lock, and Tyler.)—A. splendid edition of the Arabian Nights, adapted, however, for children's reading by omitting the portions supposed to
be unfitted for them, but which we imagine seldom injure at all heathy-minded children. The illustrations are full of spirit, and sometimes works of art of no common power ; for example, Tenniers magnificent drawing at p. 5 of the sleeping genie and the lady, who has come out of the sealed box, and who is inviting the sultan and his brother down from the tree, is fall of imagination. The lady's light and treacherous smile, and her small white feet lying close beside the huge
black head of the snoring genie, is a picture such as would impress the fancy of children long after the tale itself had been half forgotten.
Nothing, too, can be fuller of life and humour than Tenniers picture of Alnaschar and his basket of broken glass ; the laughing tailor gazes from his window at the visionary's skill in breaking his nest egg before it is hatched, the busy Oriental crowd gapes at him in unmean- ing curiosity, and the slave of the generous stranger is advancing to him with the purse which is to redeem his misfortune, but which with his bowed head between his hands he has not yet perceived. The next illustration, too, in which Tonniel introduces another face of lovely treachery,—a lady appealing to Alnaschar's cupidity by pointing to
stores of gold, with a smile of derision larking about her nibuth and under her heavy eyelids, is exceedingly fine. The Dalziel designs are also occasionally very striking,—those, for example, of All Baba and the Forty Thieves. It is not easy to conceive a more gorgeous book-present for any child than this splendidly illustrated Arabian Nights.
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