[PERIODICAL].

THE OXFORD REVIEW. Vol I.. January 1807. No. 1. [Oxford, Slatter and Munday, 1807].[bound with:] The Oxford Review. Vol. I. March 1807. No. III.

      [Oxford, Slatter and Munday, 1807] 1807 - FIRST EDITIONS. - Three works bound in one volume, 8vo, pp. 128; 257-376; [ii], 108; some minor foxing in places, otherwise clean throughout; - in contemporary half red morocco over marbled boards, spine ruled in gilt with morocco label lettered in gilt, some chipping to head of boards and to corners, boards lightly rubbed, nevertheless, still an appealing item. - Rare first appearance of The Oxford Review, the short lived Oxford periodical published in three parts from January to March 1807. - The present copy, which comprises just the January and March issues (but is nevertheless rarely found on the market in any state), provides a wealth of information on the new publications of 1806 covering the subjects of theology, jurisprudence, medicine, philology, classical literature, biography, voyages & travels, trade & commerce, drama, novels & romances, poetry, political economy, miscellanies, archaeology and foreign literature. Of particular note is the lengthy rather 'mixed' review of Walter Scott's Ballads and Lyrical Pieces (1806) with several poems reprinted throughout. The reviewer, whilst complimentary of Scott's talents, notes that the Ballads is essentially a rehash of poems which had already been inserted in former publications. He goes on, rather harshly, to draw attention to 'one of the defects of Mr. Scott's poetry' being 'the inter-mixture of old and modern language, style, and expression' (I, p. 81). However, he concludes: - 'We hope that the next time we meet this gentleman, it will be to give him much higher and unqualified praise than in the present instance we could bestow. We feel ourselves so fully aware of his great and superior talents, and so well able to enjoy to the utmost those charms of poetry with which he is most eminently gifted, that it will not be our fault if we do not soon meet with an opportunity of making, with safe consciences, the most ample amends for any censure we may have compelled to pass on the foregoing pages' (I, p. 83). - Reviews of Marshall's Life of George Washington, Monk Lewis' Feudal Tyrants, Willan's On Vaccine Inoculation and Robert Jamieson's Popular Ballads and Songs are also to be found. - Also bound with the Oxford Review is an odd volume of The Athenaeum (January 1, 1807). - I. & II. OCLC records copies at Yale, Chicago and New York Public library - it is unclear whether these are single issues, or all three parts; III. OCLC records just two copies in North America, at Chicago and Duke.