Comment on New Books

Literature and Art. Letters of Samuel Johnson, LL D., corrected and edited by George Birkbeck Hill. In two volumes. (Harpers.) Dr. Hill’s enthusiasm is unflagging. To the six stately volumes of his edition of Boswell’s Life he now adds two uniform volumes containing all the scraps of Johnson’s letters which he could collect from all quarters, excepting those included in the Life, which are, however, entered in chronological order by title. The longest letters are those descriptive of his Scottish travels, written to Mrs. Thrale ; but whether long or short, the letters are in the main characteristic and illuminating. The affectionate side of Johnson’s nature is especially brought to light. Dr. Hill’s notes are full and entertaining, though occasionally repetitious. He makes a natural mistake, which a slight investigation might have corrected, when he fancies Copp’s Hill in Boston to take its name from “cop,” an eminence. Instead, the worthy William Copp must be credited. — James Russell Lowell, an Address, by George William Curtis. (Harpers.) In this little book Mr. Curtis has given a truly admirable outline of Lowell as a patriotic American. He leaves out of view, with but incidental mention, Lowell’s great contribution to literary history and criticism, but he could scarcely have dwelt upon this side of his subject without slighting that view which was more appropriate to the occasion, an address in Brooklyn upon Washington’s and Lowell’s birthday. — Selections from Lucian, translated by Emily James Smith. (Harpers.) The Halcyon, The Sale of Lives, The Cock, and half a dozen other selections make up this volume ; and the work seems to be well done, in spite of an academic gravity in the translation as far off as possible from the lively Lucian himself. The introduction is devoted partly to a life of the author ; and partly to a plea that Lucian be taken quite simply, at first hand, and not in the light (if light it be) of the various theories about him. The volume will serve as a good introduction to a writer whom many might not otherwise know. — The Stones of Venice, Introductory Chapters and Local Indices (printed separately) for the Use of Travellers while staying in Venice and Verona, by John Ruskin. Brantwood Edition. (Merrill.) These two valuable volumes are made still more valuable by the rearrangement of the chapters of the old edition (with some omissions) in a more consecutive form in accordance with Mr. Ruskin’s wishes, by Professor Norton’s introduction, and by the many notes that Mr. Ruskin has added to the original text. These notes are delightful for their frankness ; as when, after saying that “ the coast sank into one long, low, sad-colored line,” Ruskin adds in a note : “Nonsense. I might as truly have said ‘ merry-colored.’ It is simply the color of any other distant country.” The alphabetical Venetian Index, of more than one hundred and fifty pages, enables the reader of artistic taste to see those things in Venice “ which it is a duty to enjoy, and a disgrace to forget.” To such an one this edition is indispensable. — The Early Renaissance, and Other Essays on Art Subjects, by James M. Hoppin. (Houghton.) Mr. Hoppin, who is professor of the history of art in Yale University, has collected in this volume a dozen papers and lectures and studies upon the subject which gives the title to his volume : Principles of Art, Tendencies of Modern Art, French Landscape Painting, Murillo, Art in Education, Art and Religion, Bourges Cathedral, The Zeus-Altar of Pergamon, Critique of a Greek Statue, The Masterpiece of Scopas, Hellas. He writes with a strong interest in his subjects, from the point of view of the historian and the philosopher rather than of the technical critic, and his work stimulates the mind looking for the relation of art to life.

History and Biography. Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, by his wife, Mary Anna Jackson. (Harpers.) General Jackson’s military career has been pretty fully outlined by professional writers, and his character on its main lines has been fairly well presented. This volume by his wife shows him in his more intimate personal relations, and helps greatly to perfect the conception of his character, and to account for the profound affection which he inspired in his soldiers. Mrs. Jackson has written unreservedly, and though some may shrink from the unveiling, there can he little doubt that the book will long stand as a contribution to the knowledge of a man whose personality will always be conspicuous in any full narrative of the war for the Union. — Cardinal Manning, by Arthur Wollaston Hutton. (Houghton.) The author of this volume, first an Anglican, became later a Rumanist ; he is, we believe, no longer a member of that communion This accounts for his point of view, which allows him to have an understanding of both phases of the cardinal’s career, and enables him also to point out, with a somewhat caustic pen, the respective weaknesses of both churches. But be this as it may, his book is really interesting, — all the more so from the author’s very candid manner in writing it. To any one, therefore, who wishes to gain in less than three hundred pages a good idea of what Manning stood for, in English religious life, this book maybe unhesitatingly recommended. — Jerusalem, the Holy City, its History and Hope, by Mrs. Oliphant. (Macmillan.) Mrs. Oliphant is always surprising in the amount of varied work she is able to do both quickly and well. Her Jerusalem would have been for many persons a good achievement to show for five years of toil. While we should not place this new book on a plane with her Makers of Florence in charm, she gives us, in something over five hundred pages, a clearly told story of Jerusalem from the time of David, on through the days of Solomon and the kings of Judah, the prophets, the return and restoration, to the birth of our Lord and the ending of the Jewish dispensation. It is not alone a history that is written, however, for to the mind of the writer the closing scenes of the life of Christ bring into the story much devotion of that simple, sincere, earnest sort that is characteristic of Mrs. Oliphant. The introduction will interest many persons who do not care for the subject of the book, for it is Mrs. Oliphant’s half-passionate, half-humorous protest against the assumptions of the so-called higher criticism as applied to the Old Testament. She declines to take the word of the critic in researches in which he has “ formed his theory before he began to inquire into his subject.” The writer’s clear woman’s-wit has seldom been seen to better advantage than in this clever preface. The book is illustrated, and, like all that comes from Macmillan, is printed in the simple yet distinguished fashion characteristic of that house. — The Story of Jane Austen’s Life, by Oscar Fay Adams. (McClurg.) Practically all the materials that exist for a life of Miss Austen are to be found in the memoir written by her nephew, the Rev. J. E. Austen-Leigh, fiftytwo years after her death, and in the collection of letters edited by her grandnephew, Lord Brabourne, fifteen years later. All beyond this is but inference and conjecture. The title of Mr. Adams’s volume exactly characterizes it, for, unlike some of her recent biographers, his concern is mainly with the novelist herself, and only incidentally with her works. Though he could add nothing to our knowledge of Miss Austen’s charming personal qualities and uneventful life, his visits to the places where that life was spent have enabled him to give some interesting local details which will be welcome to her readers. We notice that while he alludes to a possible attachment between Miss Austen and “ Mr. Tom Lefroy,” he says nothing of the pathetic love-story told by Mr. Austen-Leigh in the second edition of his memoir, which makes certain passages in Persuasion seem like veritable expressions of personal feeling.

Fiction. A Capillary Crime, and Other Stories, by F. D. Millet. (Harpers.) We cordially recommend Mr. Millet’s book to the lover of short stories. The tales deal chiefly with tragic or curious phases of artist life, and the author is not afraid of dramatic incident. The stories are well told, in a straightforward, simple way, and from a thoroughly healthy-minded, manly point of view. One characteristic is their apparent truthfulness ; and the proportion of fact to fiction is naively confided to the reader in a pleasant epilogue at the end of the book, which Mr. Millet modestly calls The Bush. We are seldom able to quote the proverb which furnishes him with this title more justly than in connection with this companionable volume. — The Heresy of Mehetabel Clark, by Annie Trumbull Slosson. (Harpers.) A dialect story of New England. The heretic heroine is a young woman, whose Calvinistic tenets, steadfastly held to through youth, are later overthrown during a severe illness. From that time on, her views of what constitutes religion become too spiritualized to be apparent to the church members of her village, to whom she becomes as an heathen and a publican. Her story — and it is a touching one — is told by an old farmer, not of her way of thinking ; and this is done with considerable literary skill. But heroines in theological eclipse are becoming so alarmingly common that we confess to being a little tired of their woes. — Peculiar People, by Samuel Phelps Leland. (Aust & Clark, Cleveland.) An attempt at a story, the scene laid in 1860 in the Southwest ; the author’s intention being apparently to discuss communistic theories of the Owen type, and to show through the characters of his story how true religion and true love refute such doctrines. — Pine Valley, by Lewis B. France. (The Chain & Hardy Co., Denver, Col.) A couple of frontier stories, told by a writer who has clearly a Strong feeling for the nature in which his stories are set, and a humane sympathy with the rude life which he portrays. The stories are somewhat allusive in treatment, but they have considerable vigor, and their slightness of structure leads one to wish the writer might lay aside the form of fiction and write direct narrative. — With Edge Tools, by H. B. Taylor. (McClurg.) The story, if so invertebrate a creation can be called such, deals with the attempt of a New York club man, who has slain his thousands, to slay also his ten thousands in the person of a Chicago merchant’s wife. It is a wicked, wicked effort, told by a man who we venture to say never was in a club house in New York, and knows wickedness chiefly by the feeding of a somewhat feeble imagination upon the husks of erotic literature. The virtue and vice alike in this book are to be reprehended as quite fictitious. — The Fate of Fenella, by Helen Mathers, Justin H. McCarthy, Frances Eleanor Trollope, etc. (Cassell.) In the prefatory note to this volume the publishers state that “ they offer the reading public a genuine novelty. The idea of a novel written by twenty-four popular writers is certainly an original one. The ladies and gentlemen who have written The Fate of Fenella have done their work quite independently of each other. There has been collaboration, but not consultation. As each one wrote a chapter, it was passed on to the next, and so on until it reached the hands of Mr. F. Anstey, whose peculiar and delightful humor made him a fitting choice for bringing the story to a satisfactory close.” To every clause of this unique statement the critic agrees — in a Pickwickian sense ; and he congratulates the publishers on having discovered twentyfour littérateurs who have indeed done their work quite independently of one another. It is also true that the task of writing the last chapter of this far too lurid tale must have furnished Mr. F. Anstey with sensations peculiar, if not delightful.

Philosophy and Ethics. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, an Essay in the Form of Lectures, by Josiah Royce. (Houghton.) Readers of The Atlantic have already had a taste of this volume in the two papers on Hegel and Schopenhauer printed in this magazine. Interesting and valuable as they were independently, they create a deeper interest when read in the continuous thought of the book. Dr. Royce’s sincere earnestness of quest is veiled sometimes under an almost whimsical airiness of tone, and the reader, who is not a hearer, occasionally grows a Little restless under the chase he is led in beating the bush ; but no one who is willing to think on themes of universal avail can well resist the charm of this persuasive, wide-sweeping philosophic survey. The concrete plan by which the progress of ideas is viewed in the light of Successive philosophic lives is admirable, and in his connection of the doctrine of evolution with the development of metaphysical philosophy Dr. Royce has gone far to bring together what thinner minds have thought to rend asunder. — Homilies of Science, by Paul Carus. (The Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago.) A collection of editorial articles which had for their common purpose the inculcation of true ethics through the suggestion of scientifically declared facts. There is a sincerity in the writer’s mind which at once attracts the reader; and whatever may be the limitations of his religious creed, — limitations which appear to be the effect of a warped early training, — the ideals which he holds are lofty, and the demands which he makes upon himself are stringent. The book ought to serve as a tonic for persons afflicted by flabbiness of thought. — Dr. William James has abridged his two stately volumes into a small handbook on Psychology, for the American Science Series, Briefer Course (Holt) ; but he is an author of too much zest and of too fertile a mind to have contented himself with a mechanical abridgment, and thus this volume contains not only new material, but a fresh statement of the author’s position. The frankness of his expression is one of the great charms of this writer, and the reader who takes up the book to glance at it as a textbook is very likely to linger over its pages because of their directness of appeal to his interest, and the candor with which the writer speaks his mind out. — The Philosophy of Locke, in Extracts from The Essay Concerning Human Understanding, arranged, with introductory notes, by John E. Russell. (Holt.) The first volume in the series of Modern Philosophers, edited by E. Hershey Sneath. The method employed is to give the Essay in its most essential parts, and to preface it with a biographical sketch, and a brief, condensed statement of Locke’s philosophy and its influence. Dr. Russell is very happy in his condensation ; in his examination into the influence of Locke, he confines himself necessarily to the relation to philosophy, and very briefly intimates that a logical sequence would land one in Kant rather than in Hume. It is a pity that he could not have amplified this statement. — Another volume in the same series is The Philosophy of Reid as contained in the Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, with Introduction and Selected Notes by E. Hershey Sneath. Dr. Sneath’s method consists in taking Reid’s most representative work and bringing it within the space prescribed by the series by omitting certain less important sections. He points out Reid’s relation to his predecessors, especially to Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and his influence on his successors, notably Dugald Stewart and Sir William Hamilton. The subject has special interest for the older philosophical readers in this country, because of the prominence of the Scotch school in the academic philosophical studies of the middle of this century, under the guidance of Presidents Hopkins, Porter, and McCosh, whose influence was communicated to the large number of Western colleges which sprang from the loins of New England,

Economics and Sociology. The Platform, its Rise and Progress, by Henry Jephson. In two volumes. (Macmillan.) By the term “ platform ” Mr. Jephson does not mean the pronunciamento of a political party ; he does not even refer to that use of the word, and his two volumes are devoted exclusively to the study of the growth in power of public assemblies, outside of Parliament, given over to the delivery of political speeches or the discussion of public questions. His work is an interesting narrative of the expanding power of free speech in England. Beginning with the most conspicuous origin in open-air religious assemblies during the period of Whitefield and Wesley, he traces the development of public gatherings for the expression of opinion and the registration of popular judgment down to the present day. His work is therefore a history of public discussion from about 1760, and throws a strong side light upon modern English history. Such a work would be practically impossible if devoted to American history, so difficult is it to separate free speech out of legislature from speech within. — The Industrial and Commercial History of England, by James E. Thorold Rogers ; edited by his son, Arthur G. L. Rogers. (Putnams.) Mr. Rogers took up his subject in these lectures topically rather than chronologically, but this is of less consequence since we have his Six Centuries of Work and Wages. To the nonprofessional reader the lectures have an interest beyond that which attaches to more systematic work, in the vivid personality of the writer, with his keen thrust at shams, his brusque arrogance, his habit of hard hitting, and the humane instinct which constantly issues out of the discussion of economic questions.