_Truth and Poetry, from my own Life, or the Autobiography of Goethe_, edited by PARKE GODWIN, is issued in a second edition by George P. Putnam, with a preface, showing the plagiarisms which have been committed on it in a pretended English translation from the original, by one John Oxenford. This enterprising person has made a bold appropriation of the American version, with only such changes as might serve the purpose of concealing the fraud. In addition to this felonious proceeding, he charges the translation to which he has helped himself so freely, with various inaccuracies, not only stealing the property, but giving it a bad name. The work of the American editor has thus found a singular, but effectual guarantee for its value, and is virtually pronounced to be a translation incapable of essential improvement. With the resources possessed by Mr. GODWIN, in his own admirable command both of the German and of the English language, and the aid of the rare scholarship in this department of letters of Mr. CHARLES A. DANA and Mr. JOHN S. DWIGHT, to whom a portion of the work was intrusted, he could not fail to produce a version which would leave little to be desired by the most fastidious critic. It is unnecessary to speak of the merits of the original, which is familiar to all who have the slightest tincture of German literature. As a history of the progress of literary culture in Germany, as well as of the rich development of Goethe’s own mind, it is one of the most instructive, and at the same time, the most entertaining biographies in any language. Daniel Adee has republished, in a cheap form, the twenty-first part of _Braithwaite’s Retrospect of Practical Medicine and Surgery_, a work richly entitled to a place in every physician’s library. _Domestic History of the Revolution_, by Mrs. ELLET (Baker and Scribner), follows the thread of the Revolutionary drama, unfolding many agreeable and often touching incidents, which have not been brought to light before, and illustrating the manners and society of that day, in connection with the great struggle for national life. The researches of the author in collecting materials for “The Women of the Revolution,” have put her in possession of a variety of domestic details and anecdotes, illustrative of the state of the country at different intervals, which she has used with excellent effect in the composition of this volume. Without indulging in fanciful embellishment, she has confined herself to the simple facts of history, rejecting all traditional matter, which is not sustained by undoubted authority. The events of the war in the upper districts of South Carolina, are described at length, as, in the opinion of Mrs. Ellet, no history has ever yet done justice to that portion of the country, nor to the chivalrous actors who there signalized themselves in the Revolutionary contest.