The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I, No. 7 | Page 2

woman--for Lola Montes is a second Homer--the reading
world may anticipate an interesting, chapter of life. No writer is better
fitted for such a work than so profound a man of the world, and so keen
a painter of character, as Balzac.
"The well-known actress, Mlle. Georges, who was in her prime during
the most remarkable epoch of the century, and was in relations with the
most prominent persons of the Empire, is also preparing a narrative of
her richly varied experiences. Perhaps these attractive examples may
induce Madame Girardin also to bestow her memoirs upon us, and so
the process can be repeated infinitely."
* * * * *

AUTHORS AND BOOKS.

* * * * *
Parke Godwin has just given to the public, through Mr. Putnam, a new
edition of the translation made by himself and some literary friends, of
Goethe's "Autobiography, or Truth and Poetry from My Life." In his
new preface Mr. Godwin exposes one of the most scandalous pieces of
literary imposition that we have ever read of. This translation, with a
few verbal alterations which mar its beauty and lessen its fidelity, has
been reprinted in "Bohn's Standard Library," in London, as an original
English version, in the making of which "the American was of
_occasional use_," &c. Mr. Godwin is one of our best German scholars,
and his discourse last winter on the character and genius of Goethe,
illustrated his thorough appreciation of the Shakspeare of the Continent,
and that affectionate sympathy which is so necessary to the task of
turning an author from one language into another. There are very few
books in modern literature more attractive or more instructive to
educated men than this Autobiography of Goethe, for which we are
indebted to him.
* * * * *
John Randolph is the best subject for a biography, that our political
experience has yet furnished. Who that remembers the long and slender
man of iron, with his scarcely human scorn of nearly all things beyond
his "old Dominion," and his withering wit, never restrained by any pity,
and his passion for destroying all fabrics of policy or reputation of
which he was not himself the architect, but will read with anticipations
of keen interest the announcement of a life of the eccentric yet great
Virginian! Such a work, by the Hon. Hugh A. Garland, is in the press
of the Appletons. We know little of Mr. Garland's capacities in this way,
but if his book prove not the most attractive in the historical literature
of the year, the fault will not be in its subject.
* * * * *
The Scottish Booksellers have instituted a society for professional
objects under the title of the "Edinburgh Booksellers' Union." In
addition to business purposes, they propose to collect and preserve
books and pamphlets written by or relating to booksellers, printers,
engravers, or members of collateral professions,--rare editions of other
works--and generally articles connected with parties belonging to the
above professions, whether literary, professional, or personal.

* * * * *
D'Israeli abandons himself now-a-days entirely to politics. "The
forehead high, and gleaming eye, and lip awry, of Benjamin D'Israeli,"
sung once by Fraser are no longer seen before the title-pages of
"Wondrous Tales," but only before the Speaker. It is much referred to,
that in the recent parliamentary commemoration of Sir Robert Peel, the
Hebrew commoner kept silence; his long war of bitter sarcasm and
reproach on the defunct statesman was too freshly remembered. Peel
rarely exerted himself to more advantage than in his replies, to D'Israeli,
all noticeable for subdued disdain, conscious patriotism, and
argumentative completeness. For injustice experienced through life, the
meritorious dead are in a measure revenged by the feelings of their
accusers or detractors, when the latter retain the sensibility which the
grave usually excites, and especially amid such a chorus of applause
from all parties, and a whole people, as we have now in England for Sir
Robert Peel--the only man in the Empire, except Wellington, who had a
strictly personal authority.
* * * * *
Dr. Dickson, recently of the Medical Department of the New York
University, and whose ill-health induced the resignation of the chair he
held there, has returned to Charleston, and we observe that his
professional and other friends in that city greeted him with a public
dinner, on the 9th ult. Dr. Dickson we believe is one of the most
classically elegant writers upon medical science in the United States.
He ranks with Chapman and Oliver Wendell Holmes in the grace of his
periods as well as in the thoroughness of his learning and the exactness
and acuteness of his logic. Like Holmes, too, he is a poet, and,
generally, a very accomplished litterateur. We regret the loss that New
York