A literal prose translation of Homer, by Mr. T. A. Buckley, has just appeared in London. No prose version will cause any just notion of the spirit of Homer. Of the half dozen metrical translations published recently, we think that of our countryman Munford the best. Henry W. Herbert has given us parts of the Iliad in admirable style. No one, however, has yet equalled old Chapman--certainly not Pope nor Cowper. The most successful translation into a modern language is unquestionably the German one by Voss. Mure and Grote have written the ablest dissertations in English upon the Homeric controversy, but they are not poets, and could not if they would translate the great bard. * * * * * R. P. GILLIES, a contemporary of the great authors of the last age, has published in three volumes _Memoirs of a Literary Veteran_. More than half a century spent in the society of the lions of literature, could hardly fail to furnish a store of amusing anecdotes, and a sprinkling of interesting information. Mr. Gillies has also this advantage over many collectors of similar reminiscences, that he was not only an author among authors, but that his social position in early life gave him access to the best circles. Scott, Wordsworth, Campbell, the Ettrick Shepherd, Rogers, Galt, Maginn, Haydon, and many more names of interest, figure frequently in his pages. Upon the whole, however, his work is tedious, and quite too much occupied with matters that can be entertaining only to his most intimate associates. Gillies was one of the early contributors to "Blackwood," and figured as "Kemperhausen" in the _Noctes Ambrosianae_. He was also the originator and first editor of the Foreign Quarterly Review, and was one of the first to make German literature familiar in England. * * * * *