Comment on New Books

Literature and Literary History. No intimation is given of the number of volumes to be devoted to George William Curtis’s Orations and Addresses, but the three dignified octavos already published, each with its index, divide well the bulk of his oratorical labor; for the first is on the Principles and Character of American Institutions and the Duties of American Citizens, the second contains Addresses and Reports of the Reform of the Civil Service of the United States, and the third consists of Historical and Memorial Addresses. The buoyancy of Mr. Curtis’s nature, and the loyalty to high ideals which he displayed in public life, more particularly, will render these addresses inspiriting and fruitful long after the immediate occasion for their delivery has passed. We wish especially that the volumes may be read and re-read by college students. (Harpers.)—The English Religious Drama, by Katharine Lee Bates. (Macmillan.) The larger part of this excellent book is devoted to the Miracle Plays of old England, and the writer’s sympathetic study has served to show very clearly what they were and what they signified, both in their time and in preparing the way for the development of the later drama. The author has been very happy in her descriptions of these early plays, for she has selected and commented upon just enough of the right passages to satisfy the curiosity oi a reader who cannot make the selections for himself. Nor does one quite forget that the writer is a woman. Who else would have spoken of Adam as “overcome by his masculine curiosity”?— Authors and their Public in Ancient Times, by George Haven Putnam. (Putnams.) The author’s services in behalf of international copyright have already given evidence of his interest in the question of literary property. Nor is this the first book that he has put forth upon the subject. It is by no means intended as the last, for Mr. Putnam announces his purpose of bringing the history of the relations of author, publisher, and public up to the present day. This book, dealing cursorily with various Eastern countries, and more specifically with Greece and Rome, is but a preface to a study of the period beginning with the invention of printing, — the only period, indeed, in the world’s history in which the ownership of ideas has been established upon a firm basis. Much that is curious and interesting in the centuries that went before is related in this preliminary volume. — The Book-Hunter in Paris, Studies among the Bookstalls and the Quays, by Octave Uzanne, with a Preface by Augustine Birrell. (McClurg.) The writer seems to have enjoyed himself thoroughly in his browsings along the parapets of the left bank of the Seine, and he has succeeded in putting the spirit of his pleasure into this book. It is a most leisurely work, with an appropriate touch of bookishness in its maimer. Without a suspicion of haste, and with a delightful lack of formality, it brings together a considerable array of anecdote, tradition, and unpretentious biography. Most agreeable of all its records is that of M. Xavier Marmier, and of the dinner which, in accordance with his will and in memory of the pleasure the stalls had afforded him, was given soon after his death to ninety-five booksellers of the left bank. — The Builders of American Literature, Biographical Sketches of American Authors born Previous to 1826, by Francis H. Underwood. (Lee & Shepard.) More than twenty years ago Mr. Underwood published his two Hand-Books of English Literature. Now, instead of merely revising the volume that dealt with American writers, he has found the necessary changes so many and the additions so considerable as to render advisable the preparation of two new volumes, of which this is the first. After an Historical Introduction, he provides the reader with sketches and estimates of more than a hundred writers of the generations passed and passing. There is, indeed, no dearth of pathetic suggestion in the array of names which, though they could not have been omitted from such a book as this, are in reality names, and nothing more. — The Annual Literary Index for 1893, edited, with the Coöperation of Members of the American Library Association and of the Library Journal Staff, by W. I. Fletcher and R. R. Bowker. (Publishers’ Weekly, New York.) The editors of this useful book have taken a comprehensive view of their function ; for not only do they provide an Index to Periodicals, but they give the contents of a considerable body of literature, some sixscore books, which are made up of collections, like volumes of essays, studies in literature and biography, and the like, an author-index to both lists, a list of bibliographies published either separately or in connection with treatises, and, finally, a necrology of writers deceased in 1893. — The Boundaries of Music and Poetry, a Study in Musical Æsthetics, by Wilhelm August Ambros. Translated from the German by J. H. Cornell, (G. Schirmer, New York.) If easy reading is hard writing, it would be natural to infer, by contraries, that this treatise was easily written. Yet the inference would reckon without the author’s evident breadth of musical knowledge, and his hardihood in grappling such themes as the subtle interrelations of music and literature, The book is professedly for “musicians and cultivated amateurs;" especially, it appears, composers, actual or potential. — Under the title The Temple Shakespeare, J. M. Dent & Co., London, have begun the issue of the separate plays in separate small volumes, very prettily made and at a low price. The text is that of the Cambridge Shakespeare, and a glossary at the end of the volume takes the place of footnotes. The Tempest is the first play given. — The Ariel edition of Shakespeare, little volumes of single plays, clearly printed from fair type, making about a hundred and fifty pages each, without notes and with rather ineffective outline illustrations, has been carried forward by a group of seven comedies. (Putnams.) — The uniform edition of William Black’s works (Harpers) now includes all but his current novels, so to speak ; the most recent additions being Donald Ross of Heimra, with one exception the strongest and most interesting of the author’s later Highland stories, and a tale which incidentally conveys some sound information on the crofter question as well ; and Stand Fast, CraigRoyston ! chiefly noticeable for the character study of the highly imaginative, deluding, and self-deluded Bethune of Balloray.

History and Biography. The Private Life of Napoleon, by Arthur Lévy. Translated by Stephen Louis Simeon. (Imported by Scribners.) A translation of Napoléon Intime, one of the more notable of last year’s contributions to the literature of what may be called the Napoleonic revival. In this voluminous work, M. Lévy undertakes to prove that his hero was “ the personification of all the virtues of the middle class; his bourgeois Napoleon being alike exemplary and admirable as son, husband, father, friend, and master, — a man only too trusting, generous, long-suffering, and kindhearted. “If,” says the author, “the human heart may be compared to a lyre, of which each cord represents a virtue or a defect, we may affirm that in Napoleon it was the cord of humanity that vibrated most loudly.” M. Lévy is a diligent compiler from the whole body of Napoleonic histories and memoirs, naturally using only such excerpts as he thinks will serve to strengthen his position ; and he shows considerable skill as a collector, with little critical insight in the use of the material thus collected. It should be said that his idea of the virtuous bourgeois is essentially Gallic, and, quite unconsciously as it would seem, he makes almost obtrusively apparent some of the pettiest and most unlovely traits in his hero’s character ; and it is, after all, the ingrained vulgarity of the great man which impresses the reader most strongly. Such value as the book possesses is seriously impaired by the absence of an index. — Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots in France, by P. F. Willert, M. A. Heroes of the Nations Series. (Putnams.) The plan of this work compels the author not only to tell the story of the great Béarnais, but also to trace the history of French Protestantism prior to the time when he became its leader in the field ; and despite the necessarily severe condensation, the narrative is neither dry nor colorless, but steadily readable. The writer has his material well in hand, and has formed a clear conception of the king, — a hero of a nation, if there ever was one, though so unheroic in certain aspects,—and of the men and women surrounding him ; and his characterizations are often acute, and always interesting. Especially does he do full justice to the moral elevation and nobility of nature of the elect men among the Huguenots, those French Puritans beside whom “the Eliots, Hampdens, and Hutchiusons of our own civil wars appear narrow and incomplete.” That the author should follow certain distinguished historians in carefully Anglicizing French Christian names can hardly be objected to, but still we would mildly protest against the needless substitution of Lewis for Louis. This is so contrary to general usage — the best guide where a fixed rule is impracticable — that it displeases the eye and seems an affectation. — The Story of Louis XVII. of France, by Elizabeth E. Evans. (Swan Sonnenschein & Co.) Few “claimants” have appeared who have not had a following of devout and often fanatical believers, and the many alleged Dauphins are no exceptions to the rule. Of these, Mrs. Evans is convinced, and with excellent reason, that Hervagault, Bruneau, Richemont, and the more noteworthy pretender, Naundorff were shameless impostors, and she devotes a large part of her volume to demolishing their claims ; hut she also entirely believes that the Rev. Eleazar Williams was the hapless son of Louis XVI. Her story of “ the lost prince ” is substantially the same as that Mr. Hanson gave to the world forty years ago, and time seems to have made only more apparent its excessive flimsiness, so that it is sometimes difficult to treat it with becoming seriousness. The author, however, takes it very seriously indeed, her faith seeming to wax stronger in the more improbable and inconsequent portions of the narrative. But in regard to the most important evidence offered, we fear that many readers will not need the Prince de Joinville’s assurances to that effect to find much of his supposed interview with Mr. Williams “entirely imaginary.” And yet the missionary is the only one of the pseudoDauphins for whom a special plea having a semblance of plausibility can be made. Indeed, in respect to the foundation upon which all such assumptions rest, the rescue of the child, — whose pitiful story is the most intolerably painful of the recorded atrocities of the Terror, — no proof worthy the name has ever yet been given. — Brave Little Holland, and What She Taught Us, by W. E. Griffis. (Houghton.) It would be hard to pack into the space of this little book more varied information, historical, geographical, and social, about Holland and its relation to England and America. The author is chock - full of his subject, and writes with enthusiasm.— Phillips Brooks in Boston, Five Years’ Editorial Estimates, by M. C. Ayres. (George H. Ellis, Boston.) These clippings from a daily paper have the interest and value of preserving contemporary opinion, and as the work of one hand have a quality of unity which is not common in newspaper extracts.

In Foreign Lands. The Rulers of the Mediterranean, by Richard Harding Davis. (Harpers.) A series of light sketches of travel from Gibraltar to Constantinople. Mr. Davis has a keen eye and a sure touch ; there is some persiflage in his talk, but on the whole he is a very agreeable traveling companion, and his snap shots at persons and things are by no means miscellaneous, but follow a good sense of art. — The Art of Living in Australia (Together with Three Hundred Australian Cookery Recipes and Accessory Kitchen Information, by Mrs. H. Wicken), by Philip E. Muskett. (Eyre & Spottiswoode.) The principal object of this work is to bring about some improvement in the food habits of the Australians, who, it appears, still follow English ways in this respect ; living, the author declares, in direct opposition to their semitropical environment. He urges the immense advantages which would result from a development of the deep-sea fisheries, market gardening, and vine culture, and writes sensibly and forcibly. It seems curious that such advice should be needed, and that, living in a climate practically the same as that of the south of Europe, the Australians should still be satisfied with the limited menu of their English kin.

Poetry and the Drama. The Humours of the Court, a Comedy and Other Poems, by Robert Bridges. (Macmillan.) Mr. Bridges acknowledges his debt to Calderon and Lope for the substance of his play, into which, be it said, he has not infused enough of the spirit of humor to make it truly amusing reading. What he has brought to it is one of the gifts that make his poems just what they are, — the gift of deftness and care, leaving nothing at loose ends, and creating an artistic unit. In the short poems to which the last pages of the book are given Mr. Bridges is more really himself. His power of saying within austere limits many things that are well worth saying has often been shown before, and no loss of it appears in such lines as “ Weep not today.” —The Lower Slopes, Reminiscences of Excursions round the Base of Helicon, undertaken for the most part in Early Manhood, by Grant Allen. (Elkin Mathews & John Lane, London ; Stone & Kimball, Cambridge and Chicago.) The London firm which publishes this book — and in one way or another it adorns nearly every book it touches — has concerned itself largely with the younger writers ; and therefore, we suppose, it is work of Mr. Allen “ in early manhood ” to which this volume is devoted. Whether these are better times than the seventies for verse, or whatever the cause, it is clear that some of the work of the young men of the nineties is distinctly more significant ; yet many of Mr. Allen’s rhymes are agreeable enough. — By the Atlantic, Later Poems, by I. D. Van Duzee. (Lee & Shepard.) The author describes the contents of this bulky volume of verse as “ the product of the idle hours of a busy professional life.” It is bewildering to think what the result would have been had the busy hours been given to the Muse. The writer apparently has a gentle spirit and much facility in rhythmical production, but seems to have been unable to wait for “ great moments.” — Lyric Touches, by John Patterson. (Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati.) A book of harmless little rhymes about rosebuds, slippers, vinaigrettes, and other objects of solicitude and rejoicing to persons in just the state of mind revealed by the writer.

Humor. There appears to be no limit to the ingenuity of man in devising series of books. Of the International Humour Series (Imported by Scribners), we have received The Humour of Holland, translated, with an Introduction, by A. Werner, and The Humour of America, selected, with an Introduction and Index of American Humourists, by James Barr. It cannot be said that these volumes are exceptions to the rule which gives a place to books of humorous selections among the volumes of doleful reading. This is especially true of the Dutch collection. In his Introduction, the translator makes the unfortunate admission that “ the Netherlander likes his fun pretty obvious, and not too concentrated,” and the specimens of: Dutch humor bear out the statement. A few of the bits of newspaper wit are amusing, but the illustrations, most of which were apparently done out of Holland, are the funniest things in the book. Can it be that the Dutchman looks funnier at least as others see him — than he is ? After all, we can imagine that many of the samples of American humor in the volume devoted to our own ways would appear rather dreary to the Dutchman. The pictures are certainly inferior, and the selections — when they are not the standard things which are of necessity included in any book of the sort — seem to us to suggest an Englishman’s rather than an American’s idea of American humor.

Books for and about Children. The One I Knew Best of All, a Memory of the Mind of a Child, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. (Scribners.) Pierre Loti and Stevenson have set the modern fashion of interpreting the life of the imaginative child in terms which produce not “juvenile literature,” but books for the big about the little. Mrs. Burnett’s opportunity was the treatment of the English little girl, a species distinct from all other little girls, and of course widely different from the little boy of any race whatsoever. This autobiography of the childhood period, then, is a book which women should thoroughly understand more than men ; yet it must be a dull grown person of either sex who would fail to find in the record many remembrancers of the thoughts still near the East and by Nature’s priest attended. The first experiences of books, death, babies, weddings, authorship, and many other things are set forth in a style admirably adapted to its purpose. It is none too high praise to say that the book is charming. — SingSong, a Nursery Rhyme Book, by Christina G. Rossetti. With One Hundred and Twenty Illustrations by Arthur Hughes. (Macmillan.) This is a fuller edition of a book which appeared several years ago. It is a curious example of simplicity which is held as an art, or perhaps, to speak more accurately, of simplicity as an element in a very complex nature. Miss Rossetti is a poet with a strong touch of mysticism, yet she perceives the absolute necessity of simplicity in nursery rhymes, and she has been simple, strenuously simple, in these little catches and verses. There is nature in them, but after all one feels that it is nature bathed in Miss Rossetti’s atmosphere. — A Child’s History of Spain, by John Bonner. (Harpers.) This book is similar in plan to the author’s Child’s History of France, and has the same merits and defects. The work follows the whole course of Spanish history, and a good deal of skill is shown in selecting, arranging, and condensing; but the writer’s style, in its easygoing colloquialism, leaves something to be desired, his taste is occasionally at fault, and his jaunty, offhand summaries of important events are often open to criticism. In the account of the honors attained by the kindred and descendants of Columbus, the young reader will be attracted by a bit of contemporary history of which he has some cognizance : “ The head of another branch [of the Columbus family] married the Infanta Eulalia, and lately visited this country on the occasion of the World’s Fair at Chicago.” This is almost journalistic in its confusion and inaccuracy.—The Light Princess, and Other Fairy Tales, by George Macdonald. (Putnams.) Mr. Macdonald has fancy, but, unfortunately, his taste cannot always be counted on, and thus there are scenes in this book which one would not wish to be set before children. — A Tiff with the Tiffins, by Frances Isabel Currie. (Hunt & Eaton.) The story of a little girl, at once strong-willed and fanciful, who, imagining herself neglected at home, runs away, accompanied by a faithful dog, and meets with such adventures and accidents by the way that she is soon reduced to a properly penitent mood. These well-worn incidents arc treated with some freshness, but the author does not always keep within the boundary which separates tales for from tales of children.

The World’s Fair. We have received a Souvenir Copy of The World’s Columbian Exposition’s Memorial for International Arbitration, — a formidable array of autographs and resolutions. From the illegibility of many of the signatures, if is to be inferred that they were inscribed by very great men ; indeed, quite aside from the significance of an appeal against war to the governments of the world from representatives of so many of its countries, a study of the handwritings preserved would be most interesting. We wonder if Oriental eyes could see in our Western script anything so imposing as the Korean, Japanese, and Indian autographs seem to us ? In any event, let us hope that the governments of the world will not be keen-sighted enough to notice pursued spelt on the first page persued.

Fiction. A Motto Changed, by Jean Ingelow. (Harpers.) The changed motto is, “ A little less than kin, and more than kind,” and presumably has reference to the fact that the young hero is really only the adopted child of his reputed father, he having been one of those infants, not uncommon in fiction, who are found on wrecked vessels, the sole survivors. The not very interesting love-story of this youth forms the main motive of the tale, though the heroine’s precocious little brother, — who, when first introduced to us, is discussing the question “ whether we owe any duties towards vermin,”— unlike his delightful predecessors, the clever and original children in the author’s earliest novel, is sometimes distinctly tiresome. This condemnation the story itself could not escape, — being as it is slightin texture, commonplace in incident, and weak in characterization, — if it were not so brief in the telling. — Keynotes, by George Egerton. (Roberts, Boston; Elkin Mathews & John Lane, London.) These tales are a series of analyses of what the author calls the female animal, — modern, introspective woman, recognizing among the new things that have come to her a return of elemental human impulses, of which she has no fear to acknowledge the power. Of course she is usually married to the wrong man, and “ misunderstood.” The writer apparently has been much in Norway, and has read deep in Ibsen. There is plenty of plain speaking in the stories, and a good measure of merciless, clear seeing. The style has lapses from taste, but in general is effective, like persons of the type with which it deals. Regarding this type two strong impressions are made by the book : that life has a frightfully present quality,— so present that a sort of triumph seems to be achieved when one’s vision is carried ever so short a distance ahead ; and — reassuring thought — that, however “ advanced ” she may be, woman is but yet very much a woman.