Recent Literature

THE little terra-cotta figures, first found by Bœotian peasants in a series of tombs in the valley of the Asopns in 1872, though evidently inspired by the highest traditions of art, are yet separated from our common sympathies by no veil of Greek idealism, and seem to offer new opportunities for the discovery of the conditions under which the heroic and religious sculpture of the Greeks, which has been the guide and inspiration of modern art, became possible. This art, manifested as it has been hitherto in hieratic symbols and in highly poetic conventions of form and attitude, together with the contemporaneous literature which has come down to us, has been insufficient to open to our view the common life of the Greeks. But if the astonishingly modern aspect of these little models do not furnish us with direct evidence to this end, it certainly gives us new and important links, which the archæologists are not slow to avail themselves of with much ingenuity of speculation. Now that, through the munificence of Mr. T. G. Appleton, the Boston Museum of Art possesses, in common with the museums of Paris, London, and Berlin, examples of some of the best of these interesting statuettes, these speculations have become a natural part of our own intellectual occupation. The first serious result of this new acquisition is a little anonymous volume on the Tanagra Figurines,¹ published by Houghton, Osgood & Co. This noticeable production gives us an entertaining summary of these discoveries, illustrated by a dozen or more photographic reproductions, together with the historical investigations based upon them by Leake, Otto Havet, Heuzey, P. d’Orcet, Reinhardt, Kekule, and other scholars. These investigations seem to have established the fact that in the manufacture of the figures certain accepted types of form have been preserved by the use of molds, and that the artistic instinct of the potters conferred a character of individuality upon each figure as it came from the mold by skillful manipulations in the moist clay. As the fignres invariably bear marks of color, the method of enameling them over or under glaze, the significance of the distribution of tints thus bestowed upon the flesh and garments, the variations in surface treatment in order to indicate the quality of the texture, the fashion of these garments and the curious analogies between them and the modern costumes in the neighborhood, — all these points are noted in this little treatise with sufficient industry of research. But the author’s especial contribution to the literature of the subject is confined to speculations as to the object and meaning of these beautiful compositions. They are always joyous in expression, and he hazards the conjecture, with scarcely sufficient internal evidence, however, that they form characters “ in some dramatic combination, either as actors or as spectators, in a joyful celebration.” Assuming that the date of the jubilee of Dædala in Bœotia, commemorating the table of the reconciliation of Hebe and Zeus, in which images in the character of brides were carried in procession as symbols of peace and good-will among gods and men, was contemporaneous with this new development of the ceramic art, the writer suggests that these figurines represent Bœotian peasants, in garb of ceremony or in dramatic disguises, taking part in this pageant as actors or spectators. Such figures, it is thought, might appropriately be placed in the tomb with the body of the departed as tokens of appeasement and intercession. These conjectures may be accepted by scholars for what they are worth; but the real significance of the figures, from the point of view of art, is the evidence they offer that the Greek ideal of motionless beauty and perfection, upon which have been based all the modern academic theories of sculpture since the lime of Winckelmann, is but one manifestation of this marvelous art, and that the animation and interest of daily life were by no means excluded from the themes appropriate to expression in either the plastic or the pictorial art of the period. This is an undeniable and essential fact, and a most valuable practical inference for modern art, compared to which these historical conjectures are of but small importance until they shall have found a much more solid basis than hitherto.

No artist can look upon these figures without feeling that they are the natural result of high artistic traditions, so firmly established and so widely disseminated that even in the handiwork of the common artisans of the period the ideal standard of excellence suffered no essential detriment. In the same manner the Japanese workman of the present day instinctively preserves certain inherited conventional types of expression and composition, which give a character of art even to the commonest things. Possibly, as a thing of beauty is a joy forever, the pleasure of easily reproducing in plastic forms the attitudes and accidents of daily life is sufficient to account for the existence of these Greek figurines. It is an instinct of mankind to do often what one can readily do well, and, moreover, it is impossible to conceive of an art able to accomplish the friezes of the Parthenon which is not constantly exercised and nurtured upon less heroic themes, even such as form the subjects of these curious Tanagra potteries.

— The great period of the reviews established at the beginning of this century has been closed, and it is quite possible to write the history of them, — a history which involves the rise and fall of parties ; for the reviews were organs of parties, and literature and politics were very closely mingled. Macvey Napier was Jeffrey’s successor in the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, and held sway from 1829 till his death in 1847. His son has now published a selection of Napier’s correspondence,² including also his previous connection with the Encyclopædia Britannica, the seventh edition of which he edited. It is a pity that the book could not have really contained the correspondence; very few letters of Napier’s are given, and these are often teasing references to what he had written which make one curious to know just what cunning sentences he pronounced upon his restive team of contributors. Enough is given to insinuate a very agreeable impression of the editor, who suffered from ill health, but never, apparently, from ill humor, and displayed an alertness and tact which enabled him to pilot the review through the troubled waters. To continue the figure, Brougham appears in the part of a wrecker dodging about the shore with false lights. One may dismiss all concern for the political trials of the review, and amuse himself with the personal characteristics of the regular contributors. It is entertaining to find editorial tribulations in those historic days. “It seems to me,” solemnly writes Senior to Napier, “on the question of length, that if your contributors write for the higher purposes, that is, utility or fame, you necessarily will have long articles; for even the longest articles, which I believe that Macaulay’s and mine are, are short for the matters treated of.” Alas, the evolution of magazine writers has not yet produced the contributor who is satisfied with a very few pages! Napier had other trials more peculiarly his own. Brougham and John Allen stood on either side of him, whispering, “ Short’s the friend, not Codlin,” or the reverse ; and whatever the review said, there were sure to spring up angry contributors to expostulate with the unfortunate editor. Brougham was indeed the most trying friend. He was really magnificent in his assumption of control, and everybody got behind Napier and said, “ Don’t you be afraid, and don’t give in to Brougham.” The editor certainly did manage his troublesome contributor with great skill, and succeeded in retaining him, but keeping him within bounds, while he kept his other contributors in good humor. Macaulay, who appears in very good light, treating his own papers with unaffected modesty, fairly gave way once in his indignation against Brougham. “ His language,” he says, “translated into plain English, is this : 1I must write about this French Revolution, and I will write about it. If you have told Macaulay to do it, you may tell him to let it alone. If he has written an article, he may throw it behind the grate. He would not himself have the assurance to compare his own claims with mine. I am a man who acts a prominent part in the world; he is nobody. If he must be reviewing, there is my speech about the West Indies. Set him to write a puff on that. What have people like him to do, except to eulogize people like me ?’” Napier succeeded in pacifying Macaulay, who in another passage cleverly hits off Brougham’s character with an epigram: “ I have not the chancellor’s eneyclopædic mind. He is indeed a kind of semi-Solomon. He half knows everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.” Brougham, on his side, delivers himself of Macaulay: “ Macaulay’s [Sir William Temple] is an excellent paper, only he does take a terrible space to turn in. Good God! what an awful man he would have been in Nisi Prius ! He can say nothing under ten pages. He takes as long to delineate three characters of little importance as I have to sketch ten, the greatest in the whole world. I really wish you could give him a hint; and as it is the only, or almost the only, thing he wants (some bread to all his sack is another and sad want), he may well bear a hint.” The new contributors walk delicately before the editor. Their courtesy and self-abasement are delicious. Godwin writes tremblingly in his old age, squeezing in among some fine sentences the elaborate request: “It would also be some gratification to me to be informed what would be the amount of remuneration I might expect for any contribution.” Thackeray has a rather mincing step, and, in brief, every one who has a weak side seems to turn it before this somewhat veiled majesty. It is amusing to hear Carlyle declare with suitable italics: " At all events, one can and should ever speak quietly ; loud, hysterical vehemence, foaming and hissing, least of all beseems him that is convinced, and not only supposes, but knows.”

It would be easy to pick out a great many amusing sentences from this entertaining book. In the secrecy of editorial correspondence, the contributors are all Truthful Jameses, and indulge in plain speaking with serene disregard of their own ears. It cannot be said that the correspondence throws much light upon the time, but it illustrates very well what is already known. We confess to finding most gratification in the picture which appears, when all minor lines have been effaced in the memory, of an autocratic editor who was more feared than a cabinet minister, and exercised a degree of jurisdiction over his contributors which would make some writers of the present day demand a bill of rights.

— Messrs. Sumner Whitney & Co. have been publishing in San Francisco a series of volumes called Legal Recreations, of which Mr. Rogers s two books³ constitute a part. The purpose is to present legal doctrines in an entertaining form, for the instruction at once and the amusement of that profanum vulgus which knows no more of the great science of the law than may have been gathered as the long-remembered fruit of some bitter or costly experience. Modern scholars are of opinion that Mother Goose can be made more serviceable than the grammar of Andrews and Stoddard in familiarizing the youthful student with the tongue of ancient Rome. Perhaps it is equally reasonable to suppose, as some of the reviewers of these books in the legal journals have ventured to state, that more doctrines will rest in the memory of him who reads them than would survive the perusal of more scientific tomes. However this may be, it is certain that persons less grimly in earnest than the professional toiler may glean much wisdom in these pages in very easy fashion. The wit will not strike critically-minded people as being so good as the writer apparently thinks it, and some of his best stories have certainly been in public life too long to retain the freshness of youth ; _yet they are good, and one may still greet them with a kindly smile, for old acquaintance’ sake, if for nothing else. No small labor has evidently been put into the preparation, and the pages are thickly studded with the citations of cases and authorities, to which the general reader will frequently turn to learn what tribunal has pronounced some unexpected or unreasonable ruling. Altogether the books appear to be sufficiently useful and agreeable to give them a good degree of popularity.

The earlier one — The Law of the Road -is the better of the two, and one finds in it a good deal of information which justifies the publishers in describing it as “a useful and entertaining story for travelers.” For example, it is hardly possible to learn without some astonishment, to use no more condemnatory phrase, that if a person is killed by a railway accident, under circumstances which render the corporation liable to respond in damages to the family of the deceased, the jury should deduct from the damages which they would otherwise award the amount of any insurance policy against accidents which the deceased may have had, and also such further amount as they may think fit in respect of life insurance. It has even been said that if the interest accruing at the customary rate upon the sum com ing to the widow by virtue of the insurance policy would exceed the income usually earned by the deceased in his life-time, it would be proper for the railway corporation to show that the widow had suffered no pecuniary damage by her husband’s decease, and the jury should award only nominal damages.

On the other hand it is interesting to know that if a person insures his life for a thousand dollars, and then sustains an injury, as by the loss of a leg or an arm, the railroad company will not be allowed to argue that the injured person’s whole life is worth, at his own estimate, only one thousand dollars, and that therefore only a proportionate part of that sum can be recovered by a sort of rule-of-three process : for example, as a leg is to a man’s whole life, so is the amount recoverable to one thousand dollars.

A dreadful tale is told of feminine vengeance. A conductor seated himself beside a lady passenger, and after some advances, comparatively harmless, though certainly in excess of the civilities usually expected from conductors, actually went so far as to throw his arms around the lady’s neck and kiss her some five or six times, in spite of her indignant efforts to escape. In a suit against him for assault she recovered twenty-five dollars; but not sated therewith, she sued the railway corporation, and actually recovered from it no less a sum than one thousand dollars !

— Mr. Morley’s monograph on Burke ⁴ is without doubt the best volume of the excellent series of the English Men of Letters, now appearing under his editorial supervision, and a book which no one should overlook. Not those alone “ who have to run as they read ” will find their profit in the study of this essay; indeed, so thoughtful and pregnant a book demands the reader’s most careful attention. There is no obscurity in it; Mr. Morley’s style is perfectly lucid, but one seldom comes across a writer who so packs his pages with the results of profound thought.

One is pretty safe in saving that Burke is a man more talked about than read; but it will be strange if this account of him and his work in the world does not serve to recall to the partly forgotten statesman some of the attention which he deserves. Mr. Morley gives us the facts of Burke’s life, and he expounds, arranges, and discusses with remarkable intelligence his statesmanship and his political feeling. He shows the marked contrast between the first and second parts of Burke’s life, between the period of his wise treatment of English politics and that of his eloquent denunciation of the French Revolution. And in considering Burke’s relation to English politics nothing could be better than Mr. Morley’s full, liberal, and sympathetic exposition. He shows us Burke as he was, not merely a wise politician, though that implies a good deal, but a profound thinker concerning questions of state-craft. Indeed, he may be called with justice oue of the greatest of political philosophers ; and Mr. Morley never fails to speak of Burke as a man of this kind.

When we come to the discussion of Burke’s views concerning the French Revolution, we hear a different story. The impression left upon the reader is that Mr. Morley thinks that Burke was almost insane during this part of his life, and that his opposition to the course of the French was but the raving of a man who had lost his head from terror. Yet when we consider how Burke’s prognostications were afterwards verified by facts, and how the men he blamed committed the very errors he foretold, one should certainly have only greater, not less, respect for Burke’s foresight. It is hardly necessary to regret that he who was a hard-headed, experienced statesman, not a young, enthusiastic poet, did not share the “fine illusion” of Coleridge and Wordsworth. What may be becoming to a poet would but ill suit a political leader. To be sure, we who have the first French Revolution behind us can take a cool and tolerably impartial view of it, and we may see, what Mr. Morley points out, that Burke felt more regret for the royal family than sympathy for the sufferings of the people in general ; yet this hardly justifies Mr. Morley in his almost abusive treatment of Burke’s position in regard to the Revolution.

But even this inexactness, if it deserves the name, does not seriously injure what is a delightful and instructive book. There is enough that is good, and good in a rare way, to make up for what some, at least, will look upon as an excess of partisanship

Burke’s eloquence is pointed out with sufficient care, but, properly enough, that has little prominence given it in comparison with what it was that Burke knew how to say so well. For, by itself, eloquence is a trifling matter, like a good voice; it is but an accessory in the utterance of words of wisdom.

Whoever studies politics will find his profit in this volume ; and if, as Mr. Morley suggests, Burke “will be more frequently and more seriously referred to within the next twenty years than he has been within the whole of the last eighty,” it will be to Mr. Morley that much of the credit will be due.

— Mr. Emery’s Elements of Harmony⁵ is a valuable addition to a class of literature which does not yet boast much that is thoroughly excellent. It is a test-book, adapted to the use of beginners in the theoretical study of music under the guidance of a competent teacher. In his theory of harmony Mr. Emery has avowedly followed the system of Professor Ernst Friedrich Richter, — a system to the fundamental principles of which much exception may be taken. Still Richter’s system, as set forth in his Lehrbuch der Harmonie, is now almost universally accepted in Northern Germany and America a standard, and has certainly been productive of many admirable practical results. The involved obscurity of Richter’s style and the many perplexingly unpractical features of his text-books (faults which translations have not been successful in remedying) have long been the bane of teachers and the despair of students. Mr. Emery’s little book, which is remarkable for its clearness and methodical arrangement, is thus calculated to supply a very crying want. The rules of composition are set forth clearly, succinctly, and intelligibly, and the book is full of suggestions, of great value to both teacher and pupil, as the result of the author’s long experience in teaching harmony.

— The Duc de Broglie has put his enforced leisure to good use. No one who has watched his career will be likely to deny that he is more familiar with the last century than with the present one, and he has in these two good-sized volumes⁶ written a valuable chapter on a part of European history during the reign of Louis XV., fur which all students of that period cannot fail to be grateful. The material for it he found in two ways. Part of it was lying among the forgotten papers of an ancestor of his, the Comte de Broglie, who is the main figure of this history, and another part among the state archives. From these two sources he has produced his interesting sketch.

What with diplomatists like Bismarck, who always tell the truth, and newspapers that print every back-stairs whisper, diplomacy will soon, possibly, disappear from the face of the earth. Certainly, so long as ministers govern the action of monarchs, there is but little likelihood of the repetition of such complicated incidents as are narrated here. Powers behind the throne sink into insignificance by the side of the power on the throne here made plain, and wheels within wheels alone express the complications this author untwines. Louis XV., not being satisfied with the ordinary routine of the accredited agents who were sent to neighboring states, took into his confidence another man, this Comte de Broglie, and sent him as a private spy, unknown to his ministers as well as to any one else, to carry on his intrigues at the direction of the crown alone. While in 1752 the count was accredited ambassador at the court of Augustus III., he was in reality secretly commissioned to support the personal views of the French king concerning Poland, and to prepare the way for the future candidature of the Prince de Conti. The count was not backward in accepting this onerous task, and he seems to have conducted his business with considerable intelligence ; but circumstances soon altered the conditions of European policy. The Treaty of Neutrality, signed in January, 1756, between Frederick II. and England altered the face of things entirely. The relations of Prussia and Austria to France changed at once, and the new deal threatened the upsetting of all the count’s previous plans. Prussia no longer stood in the way of England, and Frederick’s sudden attack on Austria brought matters to a crisis.

As to the intentions of Louis XV. with regard to Poland, it is only too clear that they were of the vagrant sort. He never seriously intended giving Poland a king, and he was very indifferent to the French party in that country. he was playing at diplomacy, and there is something melancholy in the sight of a man like the Comte de Broglie who consents to play so petty a part in so empty a game. The king was not only no statesman, he was also indifferent to those who had spent their lives in serving him, and he seems to have had no notion of the value of the count.

That this ingenious plan of double-dealing brought some of the conspirators into trouble will surprise no one. The Comte de Broglie made the mistake, of a sort that diplomatists should never commit, of intrusting the secret to the notorious Chevalier d’Eon,an adventurer of the worst kind. There were other wheels, too, within the most hidden wheels, as, for example, when Fabvier and Dumouriez tried to change the alliances of their country to suit their own tastes. Their arrest almost placed this correspondence in the hands of the Due d’Aiguillon, but the king, so to speak, packed the commission who were to investigate the matter, and thereby prevented disclosure; but the Comte de Broglie was suspected of having exceeded his powers, and he had long to suffer for it.

On the whole, there is no need of untangling all the snarls of the diplomacy of that period to get a very complete impression of its unsatisfactoriness. The incompetent king, his able but somewhat unscrupulous secret correspondent, the Comte de Broglie, and a number of outsiders, who were either misusing for extortion their knowledge of the correspondence, or coming dangerously near ruining the whole plan, — all these motley characters make this bit of history interesting, although its importance is not so obvious. That the book shows any great advantages in old-fashioned diplomacy cannot be affirmed, and if the methods of modern times are different they cannot well be worse than those they have superseded.

It only remains to be said that the book is written with great skill, that the Comte de Broglie is clearly set before the reader, and that he is a noteworthy figure. He is perhaps represented as somewhat more flawless than exactness will warrant, but that is a very venial error. Certainly the decay of the French monarchy has one more illustration here.

The translation is excellently done, being both smooth and exact.

FRENCH AND GERMAN.

M. Zola is an industrious writer. He has promised us twelve more volumes of the Rougon - Macquart series, and meanwhile he is publishing a number of articles on various literary and artistic matters of contemporary interest. In doing this, he is following in the footsteps of most French novelists ; for they always find it incumbent on them, after they have won more or less fame by original work, to give evidence of their general ability by criticising their fellow-workers, both writers and painters.

The most striking thing about this volume is its title, — Mes Haines,⁷ — and the most characteristic part of it is the preface, in which M. Zola sounds the praise of hatred as the controlling element in literary judgment. When he comes down to his work, he is comparatively free from hatred. He has his opinions, like any one else, but he states them without dogmatism, and they are not noticeable in themselves or in the way they are expressed. It would be harsh to call the book dull, but it is certainly lacking in novelty, although not every one would agree with the critic’s tempered denunciation of the novels of ErckmannChatrian. Yet even this criticism of books which bear no possible resemblance to M. Zola’s own is discriminating and void of violence. He gives Erckmann - Chatrian credit for their power of drawing nature and of describing incidents in a life-like way; what he condemns is the doll-like character of the people who are represented, and the fact that the love-making is drawn with a trembling hand. Perhaps there are some who would not be offended if Zola’s hand were to tremble a little when he is describing love-making.

The account of Taine, which is in fact an account of his character, is worth reading ; yet the volume itself, which is made up of articles written a dozen or fourteen years ago, has no real excuse for being. No one would have thought it worth while to preserve all this time the papers in which the notices first appeared; and there could hardly be a loud call for this new edition. The essays are no more than fair handiwork. Yet the preface sounds a note of warning, as if the reader were going to find something very terrible in the body of the book. Here is an extract from it, which may serve to show how little of a realist Zola is at heart: —

“ Hate is holy. It is the wrath of strong and mighty hearts, the combative disdain of those who are offended by mediocrity and stupidity. To hate is to love; it is feeling one’s soul warm and generous; it is living comfortably on contempt of shameful and stupid things.

“ Hate encourages, hate does justice, hate ennobles.

“ I have felt younger and bolder after each one of my revolts against the platitudes of my time. I have made hate and pride my two hostesses ; I have taken pleasure in isolating myself, and, in my isolation, in hating all that offended justice and truth. If I am good for anything to-day, it is because I am alone and I hate.”

Victor Hugo, if he had not formed the habit of loving almost everybody but the Germans, might have written this passage.

After this Zola goes on to mention those whom he hates : “ I hate people who are mere impotent ciphers. They have burned my blood and broken my nerves. I know nothing more irritating than those brutes who dance on their two feet like geese, with round eyes and gaping month. I have not been able to take two steps in life without running across three fools, and that is why I am sad. ... As for madmen, we can do something with them. Madmen think; they all have some overwrought idea which has broken the mainspring of their intelligence; they are sick of mind and heart,— poor souls, full of life and force. I am willing to listen to them, for I am always hoping that through the chaos of their thoughts will shine some supreme truth. But, in Heaven’s name, let all the fools and mediocrities and impotent ones and crétins be killed,” etc. “ I hate them.”

“ The fools who are afraid to look forward look backward. They make the present according to the rules of the past, and they want the future to model itself on bygone days. . . . They have found a relative truth which they take for absolute truth. Do not create, — imitate! And that is why I hate those who are stupidly grave and those who are stupidly merry, the artists and critics who stupidly wish to make yesterday’s truth the truth of to-day. They do not understand that we are advancing and that the landscape is changing.

“ I hate them.

“ And now you know what are my loves, — the fair loves of my youth.”

This preface is dated Paris, 1866, and one cannot help wondering at the self-satisfaction of a man who can consent to republish such wild talk as that thirteen years after he first wrote it.

The before-breakfast grumbling of a hungry dyspeptic over any domestic infelicity — say, a smoky chimney — at once becomes classical eloquence by the side of this exhibition of bad temper. There are, of course, plenty of fools in the world, and the number has not sensibly diminished in the last thirteen years; but is that the way the wise man speaks of them ? M. Zola is right in disliking bad writers, creators, or critics, but why foam at the month in this way ? That a man who is capable of such exaggeration, who sees everything so distorted, should set up for a realist is certainly surprising.

M. Edmond de Goncourt’s Les Frères Zemganno⁸ is a book that deserves discussion when one is talking about Zola. M. de Gonconrt has got himself talked about as a writer of what are called realistic novels, and in his preface he gives expression to some of his opinions concerning them. The gist of what he has to say is this: that this sort of literature will not be really successful until writers pay as much attention to the educated and refined world as they now do to what is repulsive. “ Realism,” he says, “to employ a stupid word, has not for its sole mission the description of what is low, revolting, and unsavory; it came into the world to define in artistic writing what is lofty, attractive, agreeable, and to represent more or less distinctly refined beings and costly things. But this it has to do by means of persistent, rigorous, unconventional work, such as of late years has been given to ugly things.”

He then apologizes for not following the better path, and explains that the depraved people are more easily put on paper than are the complicated representations of Parisian civilization. Moreover, the furniture of the vicious pauper can be seen at a glance, while much time has to be spent in studying richly furnished parlors. This is not all the truth. It may be easier to describe a workman’s lodging in such a way as shall satisfy one who lives in a parlor than it is to give the same reader a similar account of the splendor he is accustomed to ; for in one case inexactness would pass unnoticed, and this it could not do in the other. Perhaps a Parisian ouvrier would find, even in M. Zola’s work, flaws that no other critic would ever detect. Yet no one can fail to notice that M. de Gonconrt, by this defection, gives up a good part of the point at issue between M. Zola and those he hates. Where would be the charm in Zola’s writing if he were to let alone what M. de Goncourt calls ce qui pue? To the great novelist of the empire this would seem like shameful Philistinism. Yet since there are some things that are not loathsome in the world, they too must have their day.

The main trouble with all this theorizing is that these men find it necessary to enlist in a little army, as it were, and to form a set of rules before they go to work. This way of doing things, which reminds the observer of the way new constitutions are formed in Paris on the occasion of a revolution simultaneously with the destruction of the street pavements, marred the work of the Romantic school forty years ago. All who belonged to it were as vain of the new name, Romantic, as is a recruit of his new uniform. For years English novelists have been writing stories after the realistic method, without knowing it and without issuing proclamations. In Zola’s eyes their work would probably count for nothing.

The worst thing about these intelligent prefaces is that they form the most interesting part of the books. They are like overtures to unwritten operas. M. de Goncourt’s novel has a certain temperate interest, but hardly more than that. There are about fifty pages of description of people and their surroundings that most readers will find tiresome, for the author’s art inspires no greater interest in the company of the circus than one of mature years feels for the genuine article. It is impossible not to remember how different is Théophile Gautier’s Le Capitaine Fracasse. But when one has made his way through the very exact inventory and census, one finds a pleasing account of the affection between two gymnasts, the heroes of the book. While most of the volume is devoted to the frame-work, there is much that is touching in the love of the two brothers, especially when one recalls the love between the author and his dead brother and fellow-worker, Jules de Goncourt.

One amusing thing in the story is the account of an eccentric American woman, “ La Tompkins.” She is enormously rich, an amateur performer on the trapeze, and more of a caricature than one finds even in a comic paper. It is not lofty art that has to go to such lengths in inventing impossibilities. Still, this is not the first time that this author’s intention has been better than his execution. His theories are always interesting, and he is painstaking ; but the diviner spark is generally lacking, clever as the author often is.