Recent Literature

IN completion of his Homeric labors, Mr. Bryant now gives us the translation of a work which, although composed in the very diction of the Iliad, varies widely from that poem in feeling, material, and theme. The two epics do not differ as “ Paradise Regained,” for instance, differs from “ Paradise Lost.” The Odyssey is correlative to the Iliad, and, in its own way, not inferior. The latter is all fire and action, portraying superbly barbaric manners and glorying in the right of might alone : a succession of lyrical passages, thrown together much at random, which rehearse the councils and warfare of men and gods, and are strong with passion and the noble imagery of an heroic age. The Odyssey has that unity which the Iliad lacks. Its structural purpose, to recount the wanderings of Ulysses, is evenly carried through to the appointed end. Manifestly a somewhat later work, it hints at the repose of civilization, and is almost idyllic in tone. After rising to epic fury, as in the slaying of the suitors, it hastens, regardless of anti-climax, to the scenes and dialogue of pastoral life. In it we see less of “Olympus’ hierarchy” than in the Iliad, and more of the nymphs and demigods who dwell on earth and haunt the ways of men. Otherwise considered, the Odyssey is Eastern, almost arabesque ; a piece of wonder-lore; a tale of enchantments ; a magical journey, involving the real and ideal geography of the ancient world. It moves from island to island, and from town to town, never straying far from the ocean ; delighting to visit many peoples and to cleave the hoary brine.

It would seem natural for the poet of our own forests and waters to find himself more in sympathy with the spirit of the Odyssey ; yet, in his translation of the Iliad, Mr. Bryant entered, as if endowed with new and dramatic inspiration, upon the fervid action of the martial song. He now tells us that, executing his present task, he has “ certainly missed in the Odyssey the fire and vehemence of which” he “was so often sensible in the Iliad, and the effect of which was to kindle the mind of the translator.” We will look for compensation to those exquisite descriptive passages, which, scattered through the Odyssey, stimulate the copyist to put forth all his powers. As Mr. Bryant’s version of the Iliad was greatest where most strength and passion were required, so we observe that in the selectest portions of the Odyssey he warms up to his work, and is never finer than at a critical moment. The reader of these volumes will be charmed with the perfect grace and beauty of many scenic descriptions, where the translator’s command of language seems most enlarged, and the measure flows with the rhythmic perfection of his original poems. Take, for illustration, an extract from the passage in the Fifth Book, familiar through the verse of many English minstrels, who have not essayed a complete reproduction of the Homeric songs:—

This is far more literal than the favorite translation by Leigh Hunt, and excels all others in ease and choice of language. The following extract will show how effectively Mr. Bryant substitutes, for the Greek color and swelling harmony, the gloom and vigor of our Saxon tongue : —

The general characteristics of Mr. Bryant’s Odyssey are those which have rendered eminent his translation of the Iliad,— fidelity to the text; genuine simplicity of thought and style ; successful transfusion of the heroic spirit; above all, a purity of language which is, from first to last, a continual refreshment to the healthy-minded reader. The diction is not copious, neither — in a modern sense — was that of Homer ; and there is no lack of minstrels, nowadays, who ransack their vocabularies to fill with “words, words,” our jaded ears. As a presentment of English undefiled, the value of this translation is beyond cavil. Indeed, a main distinction of its author is that he belongs to the natural, abiding school. He does not consider too curiously, nor mistake suggestion for imagination ; and his style is of that quality which, as vogue after vogue has its day, and the world cries out for a new departure, may often serve as a standard by which to gauge the integrity of our poetic art.

The simplicity of his manner is unaffected. It is simplicité, not simplessc, — the distinction between which has been illustrated by Professor Arnold in a comparison of Wordsworth and Tennyson. There is, it seems to us, much that is common to the genius of the Homeric poems and that of their present translator,—a broad and general way of regarding man and nature, a largeness of utterance, and an imagination always luminous and sufficient to the theme.

The office of a translator is now well understood. It is, to reproduce literally the matter of his author, and to convey the manner and movement to the utmost extent permitted by the limitations of his own tongue. Until the latter has been accomplished, there is always room and a welcome for new effort. Respecting Mr. Bryant’s Odyssey we can affirm that he has gone beyond his predecessors. He has equalled, and generally excelled, the literalness of Cowper, and, so far as manner is concerned, has achieved a better general effect than Chapman, Pope, or Worsley. Yet Worsley’s Spenserian version has many delightful features. In view of the romantic nature of the Odyssey, it was a happy thought to render it into the graceful mediæval stanza : a verse redolent with the sensuous enchantment of a period when half the world was yet unknown, when personal adventure and travel were the desire of youth and age, and the chosen measure of Spenser was the medium of their poetic narration. It is slow to pall upon the senses, and Worsley has handled it deliciously. But in his Odyssey the matter is constantly sacrificed to the translator’s art, and the whole effect is Elizabethan rather than Homeric.

Nothing can be more clear and fascinating than Mr. Bryant’s narrative, conveyed in the true epic manner with regard to directness and nobility of style. In striking passages, whose original beauty is high-sounding and polysyllabic, he most frequently obtains a corresponding English effect by reliance upon the strength of monosyllabic words : —

But occasionally he uses to advantage the Latinism peculiar to his reflective poems. Such lines as Shakespeare’s,

show by what process the twin forces of our English tongue are fully brought in play. Verses of this sort, formed by the juxtaposition of the numerous Greek particles with ringing derivative and compound words, make up the body of the Homeric song. Mr. Bryant accordingly varies his translation with lines which remind us of “ Thanatopsis ” or “ A Forest Hymn ” : —

His paraphrases of the Greek idioms are noticeable for English idiomatic purity, so much so that the idea of a translation frequently absents itself from the reader’s mind. While in one respect this is the perfection of such work, in another it is the loss of that indefinable charm pertaining to the sense of all rare things which are foreign to our own mode and period. His selfrestraint, also, is carried to the verge of sterility by the repetition of certain adjectives as the equivalents of Greek words varying among themselves. The words “glorious ” and “sagacious,” for example, not uncommon in this translation, do not always represent the same, or even synonymous expressions in the original text. But most of Mr. Bryant’s epithets and renderings — such as-“the large-souled Ulysses,” “the unfruitful sea,” “passed into the Underworld,” and his retention of Cowper’s noble paraphrase of γέρων ἅλιος, “ the Ancient of the Deep ” —give an elevated and highly poetical tone to the whole work. The modern translator of Homer possesses a great advantage in the establishment of the text and the concordance of scholars upon the interpretation of obscure passages ; but we find evidence that Mr. Bryant often has looked to the primitive meaning of a word, the result being some original and felicitous rendering.

The exquisitely written Preface to this volume contains a forcible argument in defence of the author’s retention of those Roman names by which the deities of Grecian mythology have been popularly known. Mr. Bryant’s decision is in keeping with the habit of his mind, and highly authoritative, yet we trust that our regret that it should have been thus given does not savor of pedantry. We suspect that book-lovers, of the rising generation, are more familiar than he conceives them to be with the Hellenic proper names. They could not well be otherwise, reading Grote, Tennyson, and the Brownings, not to include Swinburne and the younger host of poets at home and abroad. And if Lord Derby in England, and Mr. Bryant in America, had adopted that nomenclature which, after all, is the only truthful one, the transition would have been complete, and the existing confusion brought to a conclusive end.

We have paid homage to the excellence of this translation, and briefly endeavored to show in what its power and beauty consist. It seems eminently proper that its author should have adopted blank-verse as the measure for his use. The English reader is wonted to this verse as the metre for a sustained epic poem. Probably in no other, at this stage of our poetic art, can the text of Homer be so faithfully rendered and his manner so nearly reached. It is the one, above all others, in which Mr. Bryant, its born master, was sure to achieve success. Finally, no blank-verse translation, at all commensurate with the limits of this stately measure, has hitherto been given us. There was a void which needed filling, but it exists no longer, Had Mr. Tennyson undertaken the full translation of Homer, after the manner indicated by that magnificent early production, the “ Morte d’Arthur, ’ we are sure that something very fine would have been the result. Bryant’s verse is noticeably different from that of Tennyson. Only in an occasional passage, like the following, the one reminds us of the other; —

But Mr. Tennyson himself would be the first now to recognize the fact that a great blank-verse translation has been written, and that for another there can be no wellfounded demand.

A point still remains unsettled, even by the work under review. Arc we prepared to assert that all has been done which can be done to represent Homer to the English ear ? The question which Mr. Bryant put to himself was, not whether the Greek epics could be adequately translated, for that can never be, but whether the resources of the language afford any better medium for their translation than that of heroic blank-verse. This he has decided in the negative, giving his reasons therefor ; and the argument on that side is further extended by Mr. Lewis in a brilliant review of Bryant’s Iliad and the nature of the Homeric poems.

Many, with even a superficial knowledge of the Greek text, will confess that, while delighted with the unequalled merits of this translation, they still are conscious of something yet to be achieved. What is the one thing wanting ? We have intimated that its absence is least felt in those elevated passages, the fiery glow of which for a time lifts us above contemplation of the translator’s art. But in the more mechanical portions blank-verse cannot of itself, by the music and flexibility of its structure, have the converse effect of holding us above the level of the theme. Here the deficiency is felt. And for this reason, amongst others, that in Greek the names of the most common objects are imposing and melodious. Hence those lines whose poverty of thought is greatest, upborne by the long roll of the hexameter, have a quality as aristocratic as the grace and dignity of a Spanish beggar. Undoubtedly Mr. Bryant has perceived the weakness of blank-verse in those intercalary lines, which are such a feature in Homer, and constitute a kind of refrain, affording rest at intervals along the torrent of the song. In the best lyric and epic poetry of all nations a disdain of minor changes is observable; but Mr. Bryant, seeing that blank-verse does little honor to a purely mechanical office, often has varied his translations of such lines, instead of following the Homeric method of recurrence to one chosen form. The very directness of his syntax, leading to the rejection, even, of such inversions as Tennyson’s,

has made it almost prosaic in this respect. Such lines as

are tame substitutes for the courtly and sonorous interludes,

Τὴν δ᾽ αὖ Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος ἀντίον ηὔδα,
Τὴν δ᾽ ἀπομειβόμενος προσέϕη πσλύμητις Ὀδυσσἐυς.

and lower the poetical tone of the general translation. We feel still more the indefinite shortcomings of blank-verse in the paraphrases of those resonant dactylic lines, which make up so large a portion of the Iliad and Odyssey, and give splendor to the movement of whole cantos. We might cite innumerable examples, like the following; —

All this points to the one deficiency in a blank-verse translation, and this, unquestionably, relates to the movement. Can a version in our slow and stately iambics, which are perfectly adequate to represent the dialogue of the Greek dramas, approximate to the rhythmic effect of a measure which originally was chanted or intoned ? The rush of epic song has been partially caught by Chapman, Pope, and others, at the expense of both matter and style ; and it may be owing to the pleasure afforded by this quality, that Pope’s translation has held so long the regard of English readers. But only in one instance, that we now recall, has modern blank-verse attained to anything like the Homeric swiftness. A study of the tournament-scene, which closes the Fifth Book of “ The Princess,” will show to what we refer ; yet even the splendid movement of this passage is unrestful, and like the fierce spurt of a racer that can win by a dash, but has not the bottom needed for a three-mile heat.

There are two forms of English verse in which, we think, the Homeric rhythmus may be more nearly approached. A good objection has been made to our rhymed heroic measure, as used by Pope (and by Dryden in his Virgil), that it disturbs the force of the original by connecting thoughts not meant to be connected ; that it causes a “ balancing of expression in the two lines of which it consists, which is wholly foreign to the Homeric style.” Professor Hadley has suggested that this may be obviated by a return to the measure as written by Chaucer, not pausing too often at the rhymes, but frequently running the sentences over, with the cæsura varied as in blank-verse. This usage, in fact, was revived by Keats and Leigh Hunt, and is notable, of late, in William Morris’s flowing poetry, to which Mr. Hadley refers for illustration. Chapman translated the Odyssey upon this plan, but in a slovenly fashion, not to be compared with his other Homeric work. There is room, perhaps, for a new translation of Homer into the rhymed Chaucerian verse.

Lastly, and at the risk of losing the regard of the reader who may have gone with us thus far, we have a word to say in behalf of that much-abused form of verse known as the “ English hexameter ” : a measure far more out of favor with the critics than with the poets or the majority of their readers. Before its name even was known in this country to other than scholars, Mr. Longfellow’s “Evangeline” appeared, and found its way to the public heart as no American poem of equal length ever had done before. Our people made no difficulty in reading it, troubling themselves very little with the strictures of classical reviewers, and it has not yet outlived its original welcome.

The fact is that, to properly estimate the so-called English hexameter, one must, to a certain extent, get the Greek and Latin quantities out of his mind. Professor Arnold and Mr. Lewis, among the rest, have contributed to the discussion on this subject, the one for, and the other against, the employment of hexameter in translation. Neither of them, it seems to us, succeeds in looking at the question from an independent point of view. Mr. Arnold would have our hexameter more spondaic and classical. Mr. Lewis sees that it cannot be written classically, but does not abuse it much on that account. He says that “it is peculiar among English metres, because it is so very like prose. It is less metrical than any form of English verse. Blankverse,” he adds, “ can stoop to the simplest speech without approaching prose.” True, but it does not always do so. Run together the opening lines of Mr. Bryant’s Odyssey, which in Greek are made highly poetical by the structure and sound, and see if they have not a somewhat prosaic effect : —

“ Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man who, having overthrown the sacred town of Ilium, wandered far and visited the capitals of many nations, learned the customs of their dwellers, and endured great suffering on the deep.”

Now where, in Mr. Kingsley’s “ Andromeda,” — a fair specimen of English hexameter, with exquisite cadences throughout, — can five lines be made to read like that ? Mr. Bryant has made the most of his material; the barrenness is in the verse.

No master of the natural English hexameter has yet arisen who has brought it to the perfection which charms both scholars and laymen ; no translation of Homer has been made which affords any assistance to our side of the argument by surpassing the excellence of Mr. Bryant’s work. Asserting, then, that he has achieved a triumph in the only direction open at this period, we nevertheless venture to predict, that a resonant, swift metre will be developed, from elements now felt by our best poets to exist, which will have six accentual divisions, and hence may be called English hexameter verse ; that it will partake of the quantitative nature of the intoned classical measures only through those natural dactyls not uncommon in our tongue, and through a resemblance which some of our trochees bear to the Greek spondaic feet; that it will be so much the more flexible, giving the poet liberty to shift his accents and now and then prefix redundant syllables; finally, that it often will have the billowy roll of the classical hexameter (as we moderns read the latter accentually), and by its form will be equal to the reproduction of Homer, line for line. If Mr. Taylor, who, by argument and practice, has proved the value of Form to the translator’s work, can reach so near his mark in rendering the hundred metres of “Faust,” surely there is encouragement for a future attempt to represent more closely the one defiant measure of heroic song. To the point made that English is too consonantal for such representation, we reply that it is no more consonantal in hexameter than in pentameter verse, and that, of the two kinds, the former is nearer to the verse of Homer. This objection would apply more forcibly to the still harsher German ; yet we conceive Voss’s Iliad to have given German readers a truer idea of the original than any English translation has yet conveyed to ourselves.

Such a metre, then, will he added to our standard verse-forms. It will be accepted by poets and critics, and the world will read it, arguing no more of dactyls and spondees than it now argues of iambics in blank-verse. Nor will any new English Homer tread upon the renown of Mr. Bryant’s crowning work, until the English hexameter— with all its compensating qualities, by which alone we can preserve delicate shades of meaning and the epic movement — has been firmly established among us, and a great poet, imbued with the classical spirit, has become its acknowledged master.

Until then, Mr. Bryant’s noble translation has filled the literary void. A host of English readers will long return to it with admiration and delight. Let us revere and cherish the fame of our eldest bard. He still remains among us, unchanged and monumental, surrounded by the unsettled, transitional art of the later generation, — as some Doric temple remains, in a land where grotesque and artificial structures have sprung up for a time, — an emblem of the strength of a more natural period, teaching the beauty of simplicity, and the endurance of that which is harmonious and true.

It would be hard to say what chiefly delights the reader of Hawthorne’s Italian Note-Books, unless it is the simple charm of good writing. There is very little of that wonderful suggestiveness which the American Note-Books had, with their revelations of the inventive resource and the habitual operation of the romancer’s genius, and rarely that sympathy with which the descriptions in the English journals were filled. To the last, Hawthorne confessedly remained an alien in Italy, afflicted throughout by her squalor, her shameless beggary, her climate, her early art, her grimy picture-frames, and the disheartening absence of varnish in her galleries. We suppose that his doubt whether he was not bamboozling himself when he admired an old master, is one which has occurred, more or less remotely, to most honest men under like conditions ; but it is odd that his humor did not help him to be more amused by the droll rascality and mendicancy with which a foreigner’s life in Italy is enveloped. His nature, however, was peculiarly NewEnglandish ; the moral disrepair, like the physical decay, continually offended him beyond retrieval by his sense of its absurdity. He abhorred an intrusive beggar as he did a Giotto or a Cimabue, and a vile street was as bad to him as a fresco of the thirteenth century. But even the limitations of such a man are infinitely interesting, and, as one reads, one thanks him from the bottom of his soul for his frankness. Most of us are, by the will of heaven, utterly ignorant of art, and it is vastly wholesome to have this exquisite genius proclaim his identity with us, and in our presence to look with simple liking or dislike upon the works he sees, untouched by the traditional admiration of all ages and nations. The affectation of sympathy or knowledge is far more natural to our fallen humanity, and the old masters send back to us every year hordes of tiresome hypocrites, to whom we recommend Hawthorne’s healing sincerity. It is not that we think him right in all his judgments, or many of them ; but that if any one finds in the varnish and bright frames of the English galleries greater pleasure than in the sacredly dingy pictures of Italian churches and palaces, or thinks Mr. Brown finer than Claude, his truth in saying so is of as good quality as in his declaration that he loves Gothic better than classic architecture.

At times Hawthorne’s feeling about art seems capable of education, but he appears himself to remain nearly always in doubt about it, and to find this misgiving a kind of refuge. It is true that in regard to sculpture he has not so much hesitation as he has about different paintings. The belief that it is an obsolete art, hinted in “ The Marble Faun,” is several times advanced in these journals, and he affirms again and again his horror of nudity in modern sculpture, — a matter in which, we think, he has the better of the sculptors, though it is not easy to see how the representation of the nude is to be forbid without abolishing the whole art. It is a fact, which tells in favor of such critics as believe sculpture to be properly an accessory of architecture and nothing more, that though Hawthorne’s sympathies with other forms of art were slight and uncertain, he instinctively delighted in good and noble architecture. This is probably the case also with most other refined people who have no artistic training, and it is doubtful if either painting or sculpture can have any success among us except in union with architecture, — the first of the arts in appealing to the natural sense of beauty.

The reader of these Notes will not learn more of Italian life than of Italian art ; it is Hawthorne’s life in Italy, and often without contact with Italy, that is here painted. But it is not his most intimate life; it is his life as an author, his intellectual life ; and one often fancies that the record must have been kept with a belief that it would some day be published ; for with respect to his literary self, Hawthorne was always on confidential terms with the world, as his frank prefaces show. It has nothing of carelessness, though nothing of constraint in the mental attitude, while in the midst of its grace and delightfulness there is frequent self-criticism. He says after a somewhat florid passage, “ I hate what I have written,” and he considers and reconsiders his ideas throughout, like a man conscious of daily growth. Sometimes, but quite rarely, there is a glance of personal selfexamination, as where, with a half-humorous air, he gives his impression that Miss Bremer thinks him unamiablc : “ I am sorry if it be so, because such a good, kindly, clear-sighted, and delicate person is very apt to have reason at the bottom of her harsh thoughts when, in rare cases, she allows them to harbor with her.”

An amusing trait of the literary consciousness with which the journal is written is the author’s habit of introducing his quaint or subtile reflections with that unnatural, characteristic “ methinks ’ of his, which, like Mr. Emerson’s prose “’t is,” is almost a bit of personal property. But if Hawthorne tells little of himself, he atones for it as far as may be by so sketching ever so many other interesting people, and the queer at-odds life foreigners lead in Italy. There is a precious little picture of a teadrinking with Miss Bremer in her lodging near the Tarpeian Rock, which precedes the passage we have just quoted, and the account of a ride with Mrs. Jameson, which we would fain transfer hither, but must leave where they are. Story, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Powers, and a host of minor celebrities are all painted with that firm, delicate touch, and that certain parsimony of color which impart their pale charm to the people of Hawthorne’s romances. Most prominent is the sculptor Powers, for whom the author conceived a strong personal liking, and by whose universal inventiveness and practical manymindedness his imagination was greatly impressed. He listened with so much respect and conviction to all the sculptor’s opinions upon art, that the dismay into which he falls when Mr. Powers picks the Venus de’ Medici to pieces, just after Hawthorne has taught himself to adore her, is little less than tragical, and there is something pathetically amusing in his subsequent efforts to rehabilitate her perfection. At the same time the reader’s sense of Hawthorne’s own modesty and sincerity is indefinitely deepened. In the whole range of art he is confident of but one or two things, — that modern nude sculptures are foolish and repulsive, and that the works of Giotto and Cimabue arc hideous, and had better be burnt. Yet we think that his journals might be read with greater instruction upon art than many critical works.

The life at Florence, with its poetical and artistic neighborhood, its local delightfulness, its ease, its cheapness, is temptingly sketched ; but perhaps the reader of “The Marble Faun” will not be quite content to find Donatello’s Tower in the Villa Montauto on Bello-Sguardo. Not that the place is not beautiful enough for any romance, but that most will have conceived of a wilder and remoter Monte Beni. It is interesting, by the way, to note that it is not till Hawthorne’s fourth or fifth visit to the Capitol that he seems to have observed the statue which suggested his romance. Then at last he says : “ I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at once. The lengthened, but not preposterous ears, and the little tail, which we infer, have an exquisite effect.A story, with all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived on the idea of one of their species having become intermingled with the human race.The tail might have disappeared by dint of constant intermarriages with ordinary mortals ; but the pretty hairy ears should occasionally reappear, .... and the moral and intellectual characteristics of the faun might be most picturesquely brought out, without detriment to the human interest of the story. Fancy,” he concludes, “this combination in the person of a young lady!” Here it is evident that he thinks merely of a short story, with no shadow of tragedy in it. Afterwards how the idea expanded and deepened and darkened! And is it not curious to reflect that Donatello might have been a girl ?

At times, in reading these journals, the romance seems the essence not only of what was profound in Hawthorne’s observation in Italy, but also his notice of external matters, such as the envy and mutual criticism of artists ; all the roots of the book are here, and the contrast of them with their growth there above ground is a valuable instruction.

It belongs to criticism of “The Marble Faun,” rather than these Note-Books, to remark how the strictly Italian material of Hawthorne’s experience scarcely sufficed for the purposes of the romancer ; but it is true that he remained Gothic and Northern to the last moment in the classicistic South, even to the misspelling of nearly all Italian words. We believe, however, that he describes not only himself in Italy when he says: “ I soon grew so weary of admirable things that I could neither enjoy nor understand them. My receptive faculty is very limited; and when the utmost of its small capacity is full, I become perfectly miserable, and the more so the better worth seeing are the objects I am forced to see.” This is the picture of our whole race in that land.

Among the fictions with which the press teems, Mrs. Spofford’s “ Thief in the Night ” is not one of the least deplorable.

It appears to us that her fancy is so vivid as to need always a very realistic theme to tone it down to such a pitch as the senses can bear. Loosed upon space as it is in this romance, in a story without locality or any tie to probability, there is a glare and clash in its effects which only the nerves of youth are strong enough to encounter. With maidens of seventeen and young men of twenty, it may seem admirable for Mrs. Beaudesfords of Beaudesfords to find her husband dead in a bedstead which is a mass of carved mother-of-pearl, and has white silk curtains with heavy gold fringe ; but after-life would rather take out the price of this luxurious upholstery in a little truth to nature, which belongs to romance as well as to other things. Of course it could happen that an unfathomably opulent gentleman like Beaudesfords should marry a woman who did not love him, and then make a permanent guest of his friend whom she did love, and then kill himself (to all appearance) that they might wed ; and of course it is not beyond the range of facts indexed in Mr. Charles Reade’s scrapbooks that Mrs. Beaudesfords, suddenly loathing her lover, should fling herself upon her husband’s silent heart, and recall him to life, love, and lasting happiness ; but after all, there seems a lack somewhere. Perhaps it is in us, who vastly prefer from our author such realities as “ Knitting Sale Socks,” and “ Miss Moggaridge’s Provider.” Even in romance there must be some rest for the sole of the foot, to which the heliotrope-beds of the Villa Beaudesfords do not give sufficient support. A little character in romance is not so bad, either; and if the paint were not quite so fresh, and the flowers did not rattle so like cambric and tissue-paper ! We should not be so exacting if Mrs. Spofford were not equal to much more than is asked of her.

The press teems with fictions ; but it is also scarcely less fertile in theological and scientific essays. In fact we are not sure that the books discussing the problem of man’s origin and destiny are not even more numerous than those dealing with the question whether this certain young man will marry that certain young woman ; though it is to be confessed with regret that the theologians and scientists do not solve their problems so satisfactorily as the novelists. However, they are in earnest, and their inquiry is pursued with a toleration and good temper not consistent before our time with depth of conviction. The savans behave themselves like Christians, and the divines have all the tolerance of savans. We do not mean by this to imply that topics of religious thought are handled solely by the clergy. On the contrary, the laity claim their full share in the debate ; and so eminent a layman as the Duke of Somerset has contributed an interesting little book on “ Christian Theology and Modern Skepticism,” which states the reasons of the latter against the former, in their clearest and most succinct shape. “ We have this treasure,” says the author, speaking of the truth of the New Testament, “ in earthen vessels, and it is so deeply impressed with the imperfections of the earth, that the restoration of the actual history is now a hopeless task.” It can be said, we suppose, without offence to those who give least credit to his assertions (that the various parts of the New Testament are incoherent and contradictory), that they are urged with great temperance and something like reluctance. From a church which disposes of all these troubles by the authority of a subsequent revelation specifying the inspired portions and giving a science for the supernatural interpretation ot Scripture, we have Mr. Parsons’s interesting essay on “The Infinite and the Finite,” and Mr. Barrett’s “ New View of Hell,” which we think will not be found more comforting by sinners than the old view, however it may commend itself to logicians. It is simply the well-known Swedenborgian doctrine that a man’s life on earth leads him to heaven or hell under the infinite love that does the utmost for his happiness in either state, and could not save him against the tenor of his life and desires, any more than it could damn him, without destroying him. What Mr. Barrett does is to assemble the points of Swedenborg’s teaching, and present them forcibly and briefly. To represent another phase of religious thought, almost if not quite as remote from that of Mr. Parsons and Mr. Barrett as the Duke of Somerset’s is, we have the “ Radical Problems ” of Dr. Bartol, in which our chief spiritual concerns are treated in the light of advanced Unitarianism.

Several literary histories and compendiums and manuals have followed M. Taine’s more considerable work. That of Dr. Harte is a rapid survey of the whole field of English literature, from “ the simple rhyming chronicle of the semi-Saxon age down to the ‘ In Memoriam ’ of Tennyson, and the thundering periods of the ‘London Times.’” It is arranged chronologically; a slight sketch of the life of each writer is given ; and there is cursory criticism of his works, sometimes by Dr. Harte, sometimes by more famous critics. It must have been a great labor to compile the book, and we suppose it will be the reference if not the reliance of many beginners : all the more therefore do we lament the commonness of some of the critical opinions where fineness was much to be desired. However, this part of the work is generally as well done as could have been hoped with reason, and the student might easily find books on literary history of which he would have much more to unlearn in after life. In his “Three Centuries of English Literature,” Mr. Yonge begins his feeble disquisitions with Shakespeare, and expands in watery insipidity of comment as he slowly eddies down to our own time. He gives what they call copious extracts ; and perhaps this is a merit. But he really seems to have no vocation to his work. His criticisms are in the last degree trite and unimportant, and his style is involved, incoherent, and—which is worse for a Regius Professor of Modern History and English Literature in Queen’s College, Belfast — incorrect. He says of Gray : “ Thomas Gray is one of those to whom allusion has been made as having confined himself exclusively to lyric poetry”; and of Charles Lamb : “ Very different from the profound terseness of Bacon, from the didactic solemnity of Johnson, and even from the humor of Addison and Goldsmith, were the mind and style of the playful writer of whom it is now the turn to have a few words said of him : differing also from them in that it is as an essayist alone that he is known to us.” This is exactly the style in which we should like our enemy to write a book ; though we wish it to be understood that we should never ask this exquisite private gratification at the expense of the public.

The poems of Mrs. Dorr have the merits of easy and pleasant verse ; and if she nowhere touches very profound meanings, it is to be said in her favor that she never causes her meaning, like Mr. Tennyson’s chord of self, to “ pass in music out of sight.” We think there is not a conundrum in the book ; and we are quite sure of much earnest and some delicate feeling. The worst about it all is that there are too many words and too many morals. The greater number of the poems teach each one a lesson at a length implying forgetfulness of the fact that lessons are tedious at the best; but there are certain narrative poems, or ballads, which have greatly compensated us, being done with spirit, brevity, and dramatic form, with an emotion that passes at once to the reader’s heart. The best of these is “ Elsie’s Child ; a Legend of Switzerland,” which is very simple, direct, and touching indeed, and worthy of Mrs. Dorr’s continual study and emulation. “ Margery Gray ” is another ballad (not quite so good), that makes us think she could give us all a great deal of pleasure if she turned her skill in verse to account in such-like narrative poetry. In fact we wish that none but the greatest poets would ever write any other sort of poetry. (Of course no living poet will consider himself adjured by this.)

Relinquishing infallibility, as we do, to the Pope of Rome and the literary weeklies, we have no shame in owning in May that we did Mr. Paul H. Hayne injustice in April. We intimated that his “Daphles” and “Wife of Brittany” were the results of his study of Mr. Morris’s unending, if not immortal, poems ; and we have since been very credibly informed that they were both written before any of Mr. Morris’s poems were published. We have the less reluctance in making this correction, because we conceive that some reasoning based upon our error is not affected by having the ground thus taken from under it. It is merely left poised in air by its own excellent qualities, — like Mahomet’s coffin.

FRENCH AND GERMAN.²

THE latest novel of MM. Erckmann and Chatrian, L’Histoire du Plébiscite, a translation of which into English has appeared in the “Cornhill Magazine,” and in this country in the “ Living Age,” is by no means the best that these authors have given us. It is an account of the late war, which is supposed to be told by the mayor of a village near Phalsbourg. The story begins well, with all the simplicity of construction

and narration that makes these novels so lifelike, but, while there are points that deserve praise throughout the book, as a whole it grows very monotonous and tiresome. It shows a venomous hatred of the Germans, which may be natural and patriotic, but which also can only breed discontent and suffering. Besides, it is too much a dry record of the war, too like the newspaper correspondent’s story. It would have been infinitely more surprising if it had escaped these almost unavoidable faults ; for a novel, like a picture, demands perspective, and one written before the air is clear of powder will be sure to lack a discrimination between what is of temporary importance and what will always interest the reader. But, in spite of these faults, the little story around which are spun these patriotic outbursts is prettily told. There is the Alsatian girl with her lover at the wars, with her double hatred of the German soldiers, who are always represented as the cringing slaves of drunken officers ; then the rumors that spread among the peasants, their early belief in the Emperor, — in all that these writers have already had much experience. But of all this there is not enough. What the novel reader wants is a story, not an incentive to the hatred of Germany. It is late in the day to praise the other works of these authors, but they are all admirable for their pathos, humor, and charming simplicity. There is a certain monotony about them ; in time one grows somewhat tired of the honest rustic who is always sipping his beer or wine and filling his pipe, but, unless taken to excess, they are more than readable. They may serve to remove some of the opprobrium attaching to the “ French novel.” From Feydeau we have, we are happy to say, not another of his novels, which have certainly done good service in maintaining this not unfounded prejudice, but a little volume called Consolation, which contains his reveries on his sick-bed, and very different they arc from his reveries when he strolled upon the boulevards and wrote those stories which were printed “ on gray paper with blunt type.” From its nature the book is egotistic ; it has not the merit of any great profundity, but it does not lack a pathetic interest from its very contrast with the author’s previous work or play. M. Franck of the Institute has published a volume of essays entitled Moralistes et Philosophes, and it is a book that may be read with pleasure and profit. He writes about Petrarch, Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, Goethe, Victor Cousin, and many other later men in a fascinating style, and with remarkable discrimination. Not that any one of the essays pretends to be exhaustive, but each one takes up some point in the life, character, or work of the person who is discussed, and examines it with great intelligence and delicacy. Thus, of Goethe he speaks for but a few pages of his Spinozism, about Spinoza he writes more at length, and with much warmth defending him against the rather shallow attacks of M. Nourrisson in his work on that author ; he writes about Petrarch’s claims to be considered a Platonic lover,— but yet, though often briefly, always without scrappiness. Aspasie de Milet is the title of a book by M. Becq de Fouquières. It is a defence of the character and good name of Aspasia against the prejudices which began to exist more than two thousand years ago, when she was regarded very much as certain well-known women reformers are nowadays regarded by the majority of people. In English, Landor’s “ Pericles and Aspasia,” a book that is now a classic and experiencing the usual fate of a classic in being more admired than read, has already done her full justice, and exalted her into the place she owns as one of the few great women of the world.

We do not know any American book that in the same compass contains so full and accurate an account of the schools and colleges of this country as that of M. Hippeau entitled L’Instruction publique aux États-Unis. It is in the form of a report addressed to the minister of public instruction, and is an excellent, if somewhat enthusiastic, manual of the state of education in this country.

Of German books we have Dippel’s Handbuch der Æsthetik remaining over from last month. It is too ponderous a work to be discussed in a quarter of a column ; but we can say that, although it goes over well-worn ground, it is a serious book and one of value. The style is good and clear. Goethe in seinem Verhältnisse zur Musik is the title of a book that, without committing ourselves, we recommend to those who know something of this art to make their own minds about it. At any rate, whatever opinion one may come to about Goethe’s musical knowledge, we find here apparently all the material there is for forming a decision. Whether it will be found with music as with other art that Goethe’s interest was greater than his comprehension we do not know, but it seems highly probable. From the title of this book, which is but an humble contribution to the immense Goethe literature, one is reminded of Fontenelle’s remark about Leibnitz, quoted by M. Franck in the essay on Goethe to which we have alluded above : “ De plusieurs Hercules l’antiquité n’en a fait qu’un, et du seul M. Leibniz nous ferons plusieurs savans.”

We shall but mention the names of some other books on music : Bunte Blätter by A. W. Ambros, a series of essays principally of different composers, a letter of Wagner’s to the Deutsche Wagner-Verein, and Das Musikalische Urtheil und seine Ausbildung durch die Erziehung. There is the usual number of histories of the war. Fontane’s Aus den Tagen der Occupation is perhaps as interesting as any. He will be remembered as the writer of a very accurate and entertaining account of the war of 1866. Seidlitz’s Darwin’sche Theoric is an excellent, clearly written discussion of Darwinism, in the form of lectures, and so brought down to a clearer comprehension by the public mind. Das Norddeutsche Theater, by Heinrich Laube, is an account of the author’s struggles as manager of the theatre at Leipsic, together with a brief sketch of the German stage since the time of Goethe. The author is an intelligent man and is known as the author of many good plays.

Dr, Hartmann, the author of the Philosophie des Unbewussten, a work of which we have briefly spoken before, has published a thin volume of additions to his greater work. The subjects are not certainly of general interest; they treat of Hegel’s and Schopenhauer’s philosophy, of Dynamism and Atomism, etc. ; but there is one chapter in answer to the question, “ Is the pessimistic monism comfortless ? ” in which he endeavors to show that it does not necessarily demand black despair. Whatever may be said against this author, he certainly deserves credit for the scientific ground that he takes in all the subjects that he treats, not carrying science over where it does not belong, but using it as an aid where most people rely merely on their own impressions, hopes, and yearnings. Although he might be called a follower of Schopenhauer, he by no means avoids sharp criticism of his master, and especially for the sourness of his pessimism. He says, “ Schopenhauer’s pessimism is as false and one-sided as Leibnitz’s and Hegel’s optimism.” In this essay he tries to redeem annihilation from some of the odium that clings to it, — a thankless task.

NORWEGIAN.³

Jonas Lie, the author of “ The Man of Second-Sight,” or “ The Seer,” has for several years been known to the literary world of Norway as a poet, in the more restricted sense of a writer of verse ; and this is, as far as we know, his first prose publication. His poems, at the time of their first publication, excited considerable interest, no less for their own intrinsic value than for close adherence to the national poetic school newly founded by Björnstjerne Björnson, whose first works, Synnöve Solbakken and Arne, had just then come before the public, and had been hailed throughout the Scandinavian kingdoms as the promise of a brighter era in the national literature. The growth and development of Lie’s genius is, indeed, so closely connected with that of Björnson’s, that we could hardly understand the one without knowing the other. In Lie’s earlier productions, the influence of Björnson is so clearly perceptible as to suggest direct imitation ; and there are those who insist that Lie has “ out-Björnsoned ” Björnson himself. But, whatever may have been the merits or demerits of previous productions, in the present work we can trace no borrowed inspiration. The style, purged of mannerism and eccentricities, moves gracefully onward in an almost rhythmic sympathy with the sentiment, and swells with a strong inherent life into an emotional tide, which bears the reader onward with irresistible fascination.

The scene of the story is laid far up toward the Pole, in the northern fishing-districts of Norway, the natural aspects of which are painted with a wonderful and loving truthfulness. The plot, if indeed its succession of scenes and incidents can lay claim to such a title, is single and unpretending, dealing only with the commonest occurrences of every-day life, and that in its primitive Northern simplicity. The hero, whose birthplace is one of those innumerable little trading-posts which lie scattered along the western shore of Norway, has inherited the unfortunate gift of second-sight. His childish associations are of the saddest and most depressing character, his father being a stern, gloomy, and unhappy man, and his mother hopelessly insane. The influence of a host of fantastic legends contributes to make him morbidly dreamy and superstitious. The sunshine amid all this gloom is the pastor’s daughter Susanna, between whom and the hero a strong attachment springs up. After twoyears of absence, at college, in which they have had no communication, he again returns to his native place ; all his hopes, his fears, his longings, his life, are in and for Susanna. In the mean time he has had many plain forewarnings of his hapless inheritance, and at length, not without a grievous struggle, determines upon the heroic course of abandoning his dream of earthly love and happiness. Susanna, however, with touching simplicity, assures him of her strength to share his misfortune, and they again resolve to brave fate together. But the sphere of the book is tragic from the beginning ; the very first chord struck is in a minor key, and the occasional transitions into major are but brief and unessential. We are therefore not even at this point lured to hope for any lasting happiness for David; and Susanna’s sudden death in the storm is neither wholly unlooked for nor in any way discordant with the prevailing tone of the story. His life was all in her ; hers was the stronger nature ; and when he at length follows her., we have no other reason for regret, than that it necessarily brings the book to its close.

Such are the leading features of this charming Norse tale. The material is rich in itself; but the reader will own that it is skilfully managed and turned to good account. The author’s genius is eminently picturesque, but numerous little touches throughout the book, indicate deep poetic feeling and dramatic powers of no ordinary scope.