Comment on New Books

LITERATURE.

The first four volumes have appeared of what promises to be the most comprehensive edition of Wordsworth. His poems, his prose, his letters, and a life by the editor, Professor Knight, of St. Andrews, will occupy sixteen volumes ; and as Mr. Knight has done his work once before, it is reasonable to suppose that he has gleaned very thoroughly after the harvest he himself gathered. The poems are to be included in six volumes, and the method of editing is exhaustive, to use a favorite and rather too significant term. Not only are Wordsworth’s prefaces given, but they are supplemented by additions and corrections drawn from a variety of sources ; various readings are added, with dates, and abundant annotations furnished. It is in this last respect that the editor has been overindulgent to himself. What possible service is rendered by a footnote to a quotation introduced by Wordsworth into a poem, stating that the editor has not been able to trace the quotation to its source ? And again and again in footnotes to The Prelude, for instance, Mr. Knight treats the reader as if he were dealing with an ignorant schoolboy. These are flies in the apothecary’s ointment, however, for the edition is unquestionably a definitive one. (Macmillan.)— Miscellaneous Studies, a Series of Essays, by Walter Pater. (Macmillan.) Apparently, the gathering up of the fragments. To any one who has learned to admire the melancholy grace of Mr. Pater’s work the essays will be of interest, and one of them, at least, The Child in the House, will doubtless always be held as very indicative of the working of his mind.—The Rhythm of Life, and Other Essays, by Alice Meynell. (Copeland & Day.) The impression most likely to remain with the reader of this score of brief essays is of a mingled restraint and penetration. He is in the hands of a writer who uses language with extreme care, picking and choosing her phrases and words to express with precision an individuality of mind eager to get at truth by a certain obliquity of vision. She takes a new attitude that she may catch a new light, but she sees straight. All this leads to a half-Orphic utterance at times dangerously near the weakness of straining for effect. — Critical Kit-Kats, by Edmund Gosse. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) A little gallery of portraits, many of them drawn from life. Mr. Gosse takes the reader at once into his confidence, and chats with him so pleasantly of his friendships, personal and literary, — for the subjects of these essays are his friends, whether he has known them in the flesh or not, — that we feel we have acquired, more than a superficial acquaintance with the authors before the specific criticism of their work begins. Particularly to be noted is the loving and pathetic sketch in which the writer lauds the memory of the “most inspirating, the most fascinating being ” he has ever known, Robert Louis Stevenson. — Adventures in Criticism, by A. T. Quiller-Couch. (Scribners.) It is rare that a collection of book reviews written in brief for especial times and seasons possess a value that is permanent. Mr. QuillerCouch has reason to call his essays “ Adventures.” Touching upon some twoscore subjects, from a new edition of Chaucer to an old one of Trilby, his comments occasionally approach serious criticism, but commonly confine themselves to a page or two of skirmishing about some salient point of attack or defense. Something about the book, call it what you will, lightness of touch or lack of weight, suggests the possible model of Obiter Dicta. Mr. Quiller-Couch is often suggestive, sometimes pointed, and once, at least, by a critical fault and human virtue, he is feelingly enthusiastic. — The uniform edition of Thomas Hardy’s novels has been carried forward by the issue of A Laodicean, Desperate Remedies, Wessex Tales, and The Hand of Ethelberta. The map of Wessex which has accompanied the other volumes is reproduced here, — a curious commentary on the devotion of Mr. Hardy to one locality. Each volume also has a pleasing etching for frontispiece, and Mr. Hardy has written brief prefatory notes. (Harpers.) — The Uncommercial Traveller and A Child’s History of England in one volume, Reprinted Pieces and A Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices in another, have been added to the new edition of Dickens’s works. Charles Dickens the Younger furnishes interesting introductory comment. (Macmillan.) — The third volume in the edition of Björnson edited by Mr. Gosse is A Happy Boy, translated by Mrs. William Archer. (Macmillan.)—The latest volume of the Messrs. Roberts’ edition of Balzac, translated by Miss Wormeley, includes Gobseck and Another Study of Woman, belonging to Scenes from Private Life, and The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan, Unconscious Comedians, and Comedies Played Gratis (the last the title given to Gaudissart II.), from Scenes from Parisian Life.

POETRY.

Poems, by Alice Meynell. (Copeland & Day.) A small volume of poetry by one who has been fed both by poetry and by life. There is much intellectual delicacy, much emotional subtlety, comprised in the verses, and now and then an audacity of expression which startles one by its calmness. The shades of meaning which Mrs. Meynell chases are worth the effort to catch them, and caught, show a firmness one does not ordinarily look for in shades. The book is one which appeals to thoughtful lovers of poetry, and we suspect will be most welcome to poets themselves.—Birds of Passage, by Mathilde Blind. (Chatto & Windus.) The major portion of the volume is taken up with somewhat dubiously lyric impressions of travel in Europe and the East. If any testimony were needed as to the mistaken nature of such a task, this book would be ample. It is difficult to understand how verse so little vitalized as this should have received such praise as has been its portion at the hands of respectable English reviews. — The Parody, by A. S, Martin. (Holt.) An entertaining anthology of parody, compiled from various sources, with an introductory essay. — Songs of Night and Day, by Frank W. Gunsaulus. (McClurg.) If Dr. Gunsaulus lacks the rare lyrical gift which is beyond the reach of infinite pains, his verse is harmonious, and he applies it with mature skill. His proficiency seems to us the result of careful study and experiment. Perhaps his most successful poem is that written to commemorate the centenary of John Keats, in ornate and dignified blank verse. His appreciation of Keats is keen and just, yet as one reads one feels that the author has found his own inspiration in Tennyson rather than in the more spontaneous utterance of the earlier poet. Dr. Gunsaulus has much that is interesting to say, and throughout his book runs a note of deep and thoughtful faith.— Songs, chiefly from the German, by J. L. Spalding, Bishop of Peoria. (McClurg.) This volume contains selections from a large number of German poets, which are sensibly arranged in alphabetical order, according to the initial letter of their author, instead of in those complex divisions which injure the practical value of so many collections. A song is one of the most delicate of creations. Transplanted in another language it may still be lovely, but its charm can never be the same. The nice relations between sound and sense must disappear. These songs from the German are careful in their workmanship, but the very labor spent upon them steals their freshness. However, the words are sweet and simple, the translation is fairly literal, and now and then a line rings with the original note. It is no small praise to add that much of the imaginative quality distinctive of the best type of German song remains. — Armenian Poems, rendered into English Verse by Alice Stone Blackwell. (Roberts.) The universal sympathy with the sufferings of Armenia lends a natural interest to a volume with this title. Unfortunately, as she states in the preface, the author is unacquainted with the originals, and as she is herself obliged to rely upon literal prose translations, the reader is separated from the poet by a twofold barrier. Still, the simplicity with which these verses are rendered leads us to believe that in thought, at least, but little change has been made. Whether the translator has taken pains to select such Armenian stanzas as best show the patriotism of the people or not, certain it is that few collections of poetry can boast an equal national pride or a more passionate love of liberty. — Soul and Sense, by Hannah Parker Kimball. (Copeland & Day.) Within and without, this slender volume shows no weakness for externals. Its sober gray binding incloses a collection of verses which discuss the battles of the soul with more austerity than grace. The thought is uniformly serious and concise, but its scope is not wide. The gate of life is death ; unselfishness and prayer are the strait road to happiness. Belief in this is a hopeful and religions gospel, but one that has been often preached before. — Words for Music, by William Wells Newell. (Sever, Cambridge.)— A Christmas Canticle, Saint’s Day Ballads, and Sundry Other Measures, by E. H. Stafford. (The Bryant Press, Toronto.) — Some of the Rhymes of Ironquill, a Book of Moods. (Crane & Co., Topeka.)

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his Family Letters. With a Memoir by William Michael Rossetti. In two volumes. (Roberts.) The first of these two handsome volumes is occupied with the memoir, the second with the letters, and both are provided with interesting portraits of various members of the Rossetti family. It would be unfair to expect a critical biography ; indeed, one would rather not have it just now. What Mr. William Rossetti has furnished is mémoires pour servir, and as such these abundant memorials of family and personal life are full of value and charm. We are glad that we have the whole group, for no one but a son and brother could have sketched so freely the several personalities. This island in the sea of British insularity—to use an inadmissible phrase — is and always must be a good picnic ground for lovers of literature and art.— Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, by W. Fraser Rae. (Holt.) It is not very many years since Professor Minto wrote that “ the real Sheridan as he was in private life is irrecoverably gone,” and so it seemed. Trustworthy biographers he had none ; for his best known life, written by the poet and professional biographer, Thomas Moore, is disfigured by great inaccuracy. Owing to the numerous attacks upon the playwright’s life and character, Mr. Rae has been obliged to stand largely upon the defensive, but he seems to us to have routed Sheridan’s detractors all along the line, and we are glad to believe that this biography is final. Politics and the drama aside, Sheridan’s life is still of great interest. His courtship of the beautiful singer of Bath, his brilliant wit, his close friendships with the greatest men of his time, and the lights and shadows of his career make a story of romantic and human interest. The book has a preface by Sheridan’s greatgrandson, Lord Dufferin, and an appendix gives the correct text of his greatest surviving oration, spoken against Warren Hastings, — Dolly Madison (Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times), by Maud Wilder Goodwin. (Scribners.) The story of Dolly Madison gives us a pleasant, gossiping account of life in the social circles of the post-Revolutionary era. Throughout Jefferson’s administration, when distances were the only magnificence of the new capital, Mrs. Madison was an important figure in Washington society. During the eight '. ears that followed, as mistress of the White House, she played a brilliant part in the unceasing gayety of the capital, where her attractions and tact seem to have contributed largely to her husband’s popularity. The capture of Washington by the British in 1813 adds a bit of dramatic excitement to the book. Politics are carefully, and perhaps, as little suiting the character of the book, wisely eschewed. — Memoirs of Barras, Member of the Directorate, edited by George Duruy. Translated by C. E. Roche. Vol. III.: The Directorate from the 18th Fructidor to the 18th Brumaire. Vol. IV.: The Consulate — The Empire — The Restoration — Analytical Index. (Harpers.) How much, or rather how little faith we may be inclined to place in Barras as an historian, there can be no doubt as to the truthfulness of the vivid impression the later volumes of his memoirs convey of the weakness and corruption of the government of the Directorate, and of the value, within limitations, to the student, of the account the ex-Terrorist Director chooses to give of the coup d’état of the 18th Fructidor, and, still more, of that of the 18th Brumaire, which was to prove the period of his final retirement from public life, though doubtless that was far from his thought at the time. But he was a keenly interested observer of affairs during the Consulate, Empire, and Restoration ; always a man of large fortune, — the price of treachery, M. Duruy argues, plausibly enough. Fortunately, the personages who suffer most from the venomous tongue and pen of Barras are not those whose characters were hitherto unsmirched, and. in the end the portrait which the reader finds most odious is that of the narrator himself. — The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians, by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. Translated by Zenaïde A. Ragozin. Part III. The Religion. (Putnams.) This volume brings to a close the English version of a well-known work with perhaps the most complete and satisfactory account of the faith and religious institutions of the Russians that has yet appeared in print. The main defect of the book, as of the two previous volumes, arises from the fact that it was written some fifteen years ago, and gives the reader little or no suggestion of the changes that have taken place in Russia during the past, decade. It is a matter for regret that a work otherwise so valuable should be under such obvious need of being modernized. The translator, in spite of a few French idioms, has done her work well. — Russian Politics, by Herbert M. Thompson, M. A. (Holt.) Mr. Thompson’s volume fills a somewhat unique place in the list of modern books on Russia. Written for a popular audience, with the facts skillfully compacted, it gives a most intelligible and interesting account of the present drift of affairs in the great Slav empire. Though the author has opinions of his own, he is none the less liberal in providing extracts from the works of previous writers. The book is a useful, and perhaps the only handbook to Russian politics now in the field.

FICTION.

Old Mr. Tredgold, a Story of Two Sisters, by Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant. (Longmans.) Old Mr. Tredgold’s portrait must be added to Mrs. Oliphant’s gallery of selfish men, a numerous and varied collection, as her faithful readers know. Mr. Tredgold is also sordid and vulgar, and all these qualities are inherited by his favorite daughter, a “popular” young woman, to whom fall all the gifts of fortune, while to her wiser and better sister comes little but loss and disappointment. As a study of a shallow, selfish, and, after her desires, successful woman, the presentment of Stella is admirable, and with equally remorseless truth are drawn the commonplace people who form the sisters’ world. Mrs. Oliphant can interest us in very uninteresting folk, and this novel, although it distinctly belongs among her lesser tales, is very clever. Generally speaking, hearty respect must be felt for the binding force which law and public opinion give to an Englishman’s testamentary dispositions, but in this case we are glad that an American novelist would hardly dare to make the climax of a tale depend upon so iniquitous a will as Mr. Tredgold’s, so little chance would it have of ever being probated. —Briseis, by William Black. (Harpers.) It is on Dee-side that we first meet the heroine of this agreeable history, a Greek-Scoteh girl, as familiar with the ballad lore of the northern land as though she were not a maid of Athens. To her enters the young Sir Francis Gordon of Grantly, and though the love that there begins is crossed for a while, we are always serenely confident of a happy ending, after the good old fashion. Some of the dramatis personæ of Prince Fortunatus make a welcome reappearance in this tale, the flirtatious Miss Georgie Lestrange being its second lady, and the chief cause of its more romantic woes.—Comedies of Courtship, by Anthony Hope. (Scribners.) Of the two stories which nearly fill this handsome volume, The Wheel of Love can hardly come under the classification of the general title, for it is pure farce, though it be very good fooling; and even The Lady of the Pool, which at the start promises to be a pleasing comedy, has many rather incongruous farcical intervals. But whatever we may call them, both tales, though far from their author’s best, show his deftness in construction, his crisp, vivacious style, and the clever, pointed dialogue We always look for. The four brief sketches which complete the book have already been published in this country, under changed titles and without the writer’s knowledge, and are here reprinted in their proper form and by his authority. — In Search of Quiet, a Country Journal, May-July, by Walter Frith. (Harpers.) A barrister, benevolently, if somewhat inquisitively interested in his neighbors’ affairs, retires for three months to the pleasant village of Thorpe Green, in search of quiet wherein to complete a law-book he has in hand. But he finds the human drama going on in his rural retreat, comedy and tragedy both, and as he has a sense of humor and pathos, his journal of passing events is far from uninteresting. To be sure, the tale has the slow movement inevitable in a daily record, but it is sympathetically and gracefully told, and in its leisurely course does not lose its hold upon the reader. — The Courtship of Morrice Buckler, being a Record of the Growth of an English Gentleman during the Years 1685—1687, under Strange and Difficult Circumstances, by A. E. W. Mason. (Macmillan.) Mr. Mason is a very promising recruit in the ever increasing company of novelists of whom Mr. Weyman may be considered the leader. The story of Morrice Buckler, while containing the usual abundance and variety of adventure, is less markedly historic than most of its compeers ; and though the action begins with a tragedy of Monmouth’s rebellion, it relates mostly to the personal affairs of the hero, which may be said to be sufficiently exciting and warlike, and are narrated with unfailing spirit. Indeed, the writer has done so well that we regret a certain carelessness as to details which detracts from the verisimilitude of his tale. His personages go from country to country with a celerity hardly of that day, and the heroine, who in Tyrol knows no English, apparently speaks that language with perfect ease in London directly after, where she also intrudes into the next century by going with powdered hair to see a comedy of Farquhar’s ; while it is a little bewildering that the young English gentleman, who is a student at Leyden, and his friend, who is a victim of Jeffreys, should both be Roman Catholics. — When Greek meets Greek, by Joseph Hatton. (Lippincott.) A conventional story of the French Revolution, in which the usual incidents are used with a fair measure of intelligence and skill. The climax is so dramatic and effective that readers will probably condone its extreme improbability.— The Reds of the Midi, translated from the Provençal of Félix Gras by Catharine A. Janvier. With an Introduction by Thomas A. Janvier. (Appletons.) There is certainly nothing of the conventional in this Revolutionary tale, which follows the march of the Marseilles Battalion to Paris, and depicts anew the terrible 10th of August. It is told by a peasant, and the writer’s perfect art is shown in the fact that the narrator, from beginning to end, in every least particular, thinks, feels, understands, or misunderstands as a peasant would. Not only is the story itself recounted with exceeding vividness and truth, but the shoemaker’s shop and the group of listeners are admirably sketched. The translator’s work is exceptionally well done, and the make-up of the little volume, which has a portrait of Gras as a frontispiece, is attractive. — The Release, by Charlotte M. Yonge. (Macmillan.) Two of the best known of Miss Yonge’s historical tales are those which trace the fortunes of the Ribaumont family in the time of the St. Bartholomew, the Fronde, and the English civil war, and her readers will be glad to meet their late eighteenth-century representatives in this story of the last days of old France and the first of the new era. The tone of certain phases of English and French life at that epoch is taken with ease and grace, and the book throughout is pleasantly readable. — Those Good Normans, by Gyp. Translated by Marie Jussen. (Rand, McNally & Co.) The Normans here satirized, none the less pungently because of the writer’s easy good humor and lack of serious intent, are narrow, selfish, vulgarminded when not vulgar-mannered, and, above all, sordid. Of course, Gyp’s delicate irony, graceful persiflage, and smiling cynicism practically defy all attempts to really convey them from their native French, and so the lady’s Normans, while quite as repellent, are hardly so amusing when they are presented to us in an English guise. — The Veiled Doctor, by Varina Anne Jefferson Davis. (Harpers.) — Emma Lou, Her Book, by Mary M. Mears. (Holt.) — The White Virgin, by George Manville Fenn, and Pretty Michal, by Maurus Jokai, have been added to Rand, McNally & Co.’s Globe Library.

RELIGION.

The Expansion of Religion, by E. Winchester Donald. (Houghton.) This book is more than a defense. Complete and logical belief make it sound a fine note of optimism for the future of religion. Religion, Dr. Donald takes in its broadest form as everything that tends toward man’s salvation ; and since salvation, or “ having all that is best in a man at its best,” is incomparably the most important of all things, religion must play an ineradicable part in human life. It is not, however, in the light of a permanent power, but as an expansive force, that the book considers religion, and the discovery of this expansion in every feature of society is its most stimulating characteristic. The larger value religion sets upon human life, its increasing readiness to accept truth wherever found, the growing conception of its economic value in restraining crime, its nascent efforts to humanize the struggle between labor and capital, all testify to a magnificent increase in its effective force. Dangers always beset the argument from effect to cause, but although the potency of other factors may in part be underrated, Dr. Donald supports his assertions by arguments at once plausible and real. Speaking of the great struggle between Socialism and Individualism, Dr. Donald frankly proclaims Religion to have cast her weight with the latter just so far as the former sacrifices the individual to the organism, and it is this honesty of opinion that gives the book much of its value. The increasing necessity of organized religion is concomitant with the expansion of religion itself, for, Dr. Donald argues, it is through the churches that universal religion speaks most clearly and most persistently to men.

TRAVEL AND SUMMER RESORTS.

In India, translated from the French of André Chevrillon by William Marchant. (Holt.) A book on India so eminently unEnglish has a novel interest. M. Chevrillon was but little over two months in India, yet his sensitive mind, unprejudiced against an antipodal civilization, is completely steeped in what he saw and felt. Though few volumes of travel are so completely impregnated with the spirit of the country they describe, there is hardly one that does not give the reader more precise information. In India is anything but a guidebook. Throughout the journey, we scarcely realize that the author is by our side, and the impressions which crowd upon us seem to come from an impersonal source. The heat, the vegetation, the brilliancy of color, the endless variety of life in its most complex forms, are mirrored in a dreamy style admirably suggestive of the Eastern imagination. A large portion of the book is taken up by somewhat rhapsodical but interesting digressions upon the religions of India. The chaotic divinities of Brahmanism and the placid contemplation of Buddha seem naturally to require a specific, descriptive treatment. M. Chevrillon’s method is purely imaginative. Its very vagueness lends it uncommon effectiveness. — The North Shore of Massachusetts, by Robert Grant ; Newport, by W. C. Brownell. (Scribners.) Two little volumes in a brief series devoted to summer resorts. They are not guidebooks ; they are simply what might be looked for in an illustrated magazine, sketchy characterizations of the places named, hardly illuminating to the person who has not visited them, and only lightly reminiscential to him who has. They are prettily illustrated and quickly read.

FINANCE.

The Science of Money, by Alexander Del Mar. (Macmillan.) Mr. Del Mar uses in part the historical, in part a logical method in his treatment, and discusses exchange, value, price, money as a mechanism, interest, effects of expansion and contraction, and reaches the conclusion that money may and should be regulated. To be sure, he admits that the method is open to the gravest difficulties. Unfortunately, he comes to this admission at the end of the book, and gives the merest hint to any one who would attempt to overcome these difficulties.

PERIODICALS.

The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine for November, 1895, to April, 1896 (The Century Co.), enables one to make a survey of six months, and thus permits a surer perception of the plan of the magazine than a desultory examination of single numbers. It offers an opportunity also to get the effect of the new type.

BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

The April part of Murray’s A New English Dictionary (Macmillan) covers FieklFish. The catholicity of this dictionary is well seen in its register of American slang without necessarily condemning it, as in the case of our picturesque use of the verb “ to fire.” We do not see why there may not be a kindred origin, without any historical connection between them, with the old use of the word, to drive one out by fire.

COOKERY.

Cold Dishes for Hot Weather, by Ysaguirre and La Marca. (Harpers.) Considering what the American summer can be, it is fitting that the first book given solely to cold dishes in all their varieties should be produced here. We recall an attractive midsummer book devoted to ices, but this little manual ranges from consommé to sandwiches, and includes fish, flesh, fowl, and vegetables, as well as salads and sweets. All the dishes described can be prepared in the cooler (or less heated) morning hours, and be eaten cold later in the day. The receipts are set forth plainly and briefly, and as no extraneous matter is introduced the small volume contains a good deal. — What One Can Do With a Chafing-Dish, a Guide for Amateur Cooks, by H. L. S. (John Ireland, New York.) As the chafing-dish has a peculiar value in the days when amateur cooks are likely to find a kitchen range insupportable, this also can be considered a summer book, and it certainly offers a surprising number of receipts which can be worked out in this, for some of them, rather cramped fashion. But the collection is large enough easily to admit of selection.