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Ripley and other friends of hers projected and carried out, to the extent of fifteen volumes, a series of “Specimens of Foreign Literature,” composed of translations from the German and French. As announced in the preface to the first volume, dated February 22, 1838, the series was to have included “A Life of Goethe, in preparation for this work, from original documents;” and of this memoir, apparently, Margaret Fuller was to have been the compiler. For some reason this plan was abandoned, but she was the translator and editor of the fourth volume of the series, containing Eckermann’s “Conversations” with the great German poet. The work was done, as her preface states, under many disadvantages, much of it being dictated to others, on account of illness; and these obstacles were the more felt, inasmuch as she was not content with a literal translation, but undertook to condense some passages and omit others. Her preface is certainly modest enough, and underrates instead of overstating the value of her own work. She made a delightful book of it, and one which, with Sarah Austin’s “Characteristics of Goethe,” helped to make the poet a familiar personality to English-speaking readers. For one, I can say that it brought him nearer to me than any other book, before or since, has ever done. This volume was published at Boston, by Hilliard, Gray & Co., in 1839, — her preface being dated at Jamaica Plain on May 28 of that year, — and I suspect that she never had any compensation