Recent Literature

THE great part of the new matter which Mr. Fields has added to “ Our Whispering Gallery,” in offering it to the public as “ Yesterdays with Authors,” is the very characteristic collection of Miss Mitford’s letters with which the entertaining volume closes. They cover a period of five or six years, and they abound in gossip about all the political and literary affairs of that faroff time between 1848 and 1854. A good deal of the talk arises from the author’s interest in American affairs, and to us moderns the praises of such greatness as Daniel Webster’s have a very dreamy and remote effect. How will America get on without him ? wonders Miss Mitford, who is much wiser in her admiration of our poets and romancers than of our politicians. She has all that good-will towards the former which would once have appeared so solely desirable, as coming from England, and which now is so like the good-will from anywhere else in value ; and her letters sparkle and bubble over in affectionate compliments and cries of delight: whom she admires she loves, and all our unseen authors are her personal friends. In the same way she has a real tenderness for that tragic Fisk of the Tuileries, Louis Napoleon, whom she always calls “our Emperor.” It is affecting, indeed, and enough to teach one a modest distrust of the opinions of good people, to consider this excellent woman’s raptures about such a man ; but happily (or unhappily) she is none the less amusing for this and other perversities, and her letters are exceedingly pleasant reading. A bright, lively wit and a kindly heart are in them all, if not the soundest judgment in political matters, or even literary matters ; for example, such a book as the “ Blithedale Romance,” with all her love for Hawthorne, “she finds too long, too slow, and its personages ill chosen.” But she owns that she criticises the romance from a sick-bed, whence, in fact, most of these letters come, with pathetically serious previsions in the latest, of the approaching end of a beautiful and beneficent life.

As to the rest of the book, our readers must know what that is, for no material of more peculiar interest has been offered them in our pages. Mr. Fields had the best reasons for making such a book in the fact that no one else could make it ; for no one else has had such opportunities of knowing contemporary authorship. These informal reminiscences of Thackeray, Dickens, Hawthorne, Wordsworth, Miss Mitford, are not merely records of the writer’s acquaintance with them, but are contributions to literary history of unique value. This is especially true of what Mr. Fields tells of Hawthorne, with whom his intimate friendship continued from the beginning of his career as a romancer up to the time of his death, and whom he has been able to present to us in Such completeness of figure as the most elaborate biographies commonly fail to give. It is by all odds the most interesting of the portraits which Mr. Fields sketches, being necessarily in a soberer tone than those of Dickens or Thackeray, and touched, as we fancy, with a more carefully affectionate hand. The end of it all is very simply, and so touchingly, because simply, narrated that Hawthorne’s death comes upon the reader poignantly like a personal loss.

Dickens is a writer who, if he is to be thought of in a friendly way, must be thought of in his own spirit, and without reserves or critical drawbacks : you cannot give half your heart to him, and Mr. Fields has not tried to do so. His memories of the great romancer (he never was a novelist in the sense of a writer of realistic fiction) glow with the ardor of such a friendship as Dickens alone seems to have been capable of inspiring and feeling ; for, as Mr. Fields happily says, he had “ qualities of insight and sympathy which rendered him capable of friendship above most men, — which enabled him to reinstate its ideal.” We have all in our relation as readers caught at some time or other the warmth of this passion ; and we should not do Mr. Fields’s picture of Dickens justice if we looked at it in any colder light. There are no shadows in it : the portrait is that of Dickens’s tenderness, sweetness, fun, quaintness, and doubtless it might have been painted with even greater enthusiasm without being extravagant. Of the substance of Mr. Fields’s reminiscences and of the value of the letters which he has given to the public, we need not say anything, for our readers know them perfectly already. It is to be noted, however, that scarcely a scrap of uncharacteristic matter is introduced, and that in this way only are any of Mr, Fields’s sketches analytical. We suppose that not even this is conscious, for Mr. Fields has that power, invaluable in the performance of such work as he has here done, of taking the color of his subject and for the time of being so deeply imbued with Thackeray, or Hawthorne, or Dickens, that nothing but the most uncritical fidelity is possible.

The whole book is most entertaining, as these pages, so lately under the author’s control, may not indecorously pronounce. It is gossip of the highest, kindliest, most captivating type. It gratifies that desire which all generous readers have to know personally friends so long dear to them; and is such a store of this charming acquaintance as cannot be fully realized by those who recall the serial appearance of the papers, and do not read them again as here assembled. To the many loving literature, but hopelessly distant from its sources, the book will come as an inestimable favor, and in their unspoiled sympathies the author will find the best, and, we hope, the most valued appreciation. The high regard for authorship which enabled Mr. Fields in times past to create an ideal publishing house, has left him a treasure of recollections from which we trust he will draw again and again for the great pleasure of all readers.

The fifth volume of Mr. Shea’s remarkable work has at length appeared, and is soon, we understand, to be followed by the sixth and concluding volume. We call this translation a remarkable work, for the reason that it is not simply a translation, but a work of very extensive, exact, and conscientious research. Two simple words on the title-page, “ with notes,” have often been found on the title-pages of very slovenly and careless translations. They often mean nothing, or the equivalent of nothing. In the present case they represent an extraordinary amount of untiring labor, inspired by a steady, persistent enthusiasm, and accomplished under great difficulties and discouragements.

The character of Charlevoix’s history is well known to all who have studied American history at its sources. It has never before appeared in an English dress, and consequently has been a sealed book to the million. Of all the early histories of French America it is incomparably the best; and, indeed, it is the only one fairly entitled to be called a history. The writer was a scholar, a traveller, and a man of ability, whose study of his subject was aided by a personal knowledge of it, and who has produced a book which is not only readable, but which, tried by the standard of his time, is neither unphilosophic nor inaccurate. Unfortunately, he does not give his authorities, except in a very loose and general way. This want his translator supplies. Mr. Shea has imposed on himself, and admirably accomplished, the immense task of tracking his author back to the sources of his information, correcting his errors, and supplying his omissions. To write the whole history afresh would be, to say the least, as easy. Charlevoix in the original is a work of high value ; in Mr. Shea’s translation, “with notes,” its value is doubled.

The English style of the translation does not equal its other merits, and sometimes displays anomalies not to have been expected in a writer so scholarlike in spirit and acquirements. Thus, the English word “ quite ” is often used as the equivalent of the French assez. “ Qui l’arrêterent assez longtemps,” is rendered, “ Who detained him quite a time”; “Une assez grande liberté,” “ Quite a degree of liberty ” ; and so in many other instances. The following can only have been a slip of the pen in a drowsy moment: “They (the Ottawas) have had no part scarcely in the kingdom of God.” Or the following : “ He had been occupied with nothing scarcely but Canadian matters.”

So completely has Mr. Shea identified himself with his subject, or perhaps we ought to say Father Charlevoix’s subject, that he cannot always avoid, becoming a partisan in the quarrels of two centuries ago, as appears, not in his translation, but in the notes which accompany it. Thus he brings against Cavelier de la Salle the novel charge of a want of energy, a quality which friends and enemies alike have united in ascribing to that remarkable personage in an extraordinary degree. Hated as he was by many among his contemporaries, who spared no pains to blacken his reputation, it remained for Mr. Shea to bring against him a charge about as reasonable as an accusation of cowardice would be against the Chevalier Bayard. So much for the blemishes of this most valuable work. If we were to specify its merits, our tale would be a long one.

In the life of Robert Schumann by Von Wasielski, we have a charming biography excellently translated. Schumann’s life was not a long one, for he was born in Zwickau in 1810 and died in 1856, but it was an active, industrious career, though saddened by disease and suffering. His biographer has given us a graphic sketch of his friend’s life, character, and productions, a task for which he was qualified by his long friendship with Schumann, and his own knowledge and love of the art they both graced. Schumann’s family strenuously opposed his cherished taste, and almost forced him to the study of law. He finally rebelled, and turned his attention entirely to the theoretical study of music ; but from his want of early musical education, “ he had to seek with unspeakable pains, and appropriate late in life, these things which are generally learned by children at play.” In his earlier compositions he does not treat his subject in an enlarged and comprehensive manner, carrying it on gradually to a perfect and elaborated whole. “ He picks to pieces his motives, which are often but melodious figures ; builds them up again, creates new images from them, increases them ; until at last the various combinations requisite to form a whole are obtained.” His habit of composing at his piano he began to distrust as narrowing, and wrote, “ I often feel tempted to crush my piano ; it’s too narrow for my thought.” He learned that to compose with ease, he must master form and theory thoroughly first, and he resolutely set himself to remedy his defects of education and want of technical training. Expression and force he never wanted, it was simply study and knowledge of detail. In 1854, after much illness, and suffering both mental and physical, he showed decided symptoms of insanity, and continued in that condition until his death in 1856. “ In his death the modern world of music lost one of its most richly endowed and highly gifted creative spirits, one of its most devoted priests. His life is important and instructive for the history of music, — important for its moral and intellectual grandeur, its restless struggles for the noblest, loftiest objects, as well as its truly great results ; instructive through the errors by which he, as all earth-born beings must, paid tribute to finite conditions. But a man who strives and errs thus may be considered fortunate.”

We leave wholly to science the estimation of Mr. King’s services to geology and geography; for our pleasure in him is chiefly, we own, a literary pleasure, and if we were to tell the whole truth, perhaps our readers would be shocked to know how much we value the extraordinary beauty and vigor of his descriptions above the facts described. We accept the information he gives with mute gratitude, but we must needs exclaim at the easy charm of his style, the readiness of his humor, the quickness of his feeling for character. His “Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada” is mainly the record of his ascent of different peaks of that chain, in language so vivid that it all seems an experience of the reader’s; and interspersing these memories of Mount Tyndall and Shasta and Whitney and Yosemite and Merced are such sketches of life, Pike and Digger and Californian, as make us wish from him the fullest study of varieties of human nature which we as yet know only by glimpses. Few things lend themselves so kindly to quotation and by-word as the happier touches in the portrait of that painter of the Sierra, who aspired to be “ the Pacificslope Bonheur,” and was such a fortunate mixture of slang, passion for his Sarah Jane, and what he would no doubt call artenthusiasm. “ An artist’s wife ought to sabe the beautiful,” “ Venus de Copples,” “ get my little old Sarah Jane to peel the particular charm and just whack her in on the canvas,” “ you just bet she’s on the reciprocate,” “ it’s touch a little bell, and, Brooks the morning paper,” “ he has n’t got what old Ruskin calls for,” “ they ain’t assuming a pleasant expression and looking at spots, while their likeness is took,” — are phrases on the tongues of many who must gravely doubt if the same H. G. really said, “ I would take please in stating that my name is Hank G. Smith, artist : I would request yours.” Here an excessive animation pushes admirable character into regrettable caricature ; but there is no such fault to find with the picture of the Pike family with their “ band o’ pork,” and who seem true to life in every word and movement. What adds to the satisfaction that one feels in these sketches is the sense and the sympathy with which the author s observation is philosophized, — a touch of pity and of poetry with which this rudeness and squalor is studied. With a like generosity the whole Californian problem is glanced at in the brief concluding chapter, — a chapter in which Mr. King reconciles all that their critics say against Californians with all that they hope of themselves, in such a way as to convince his reader that both are right.

“ Kaweah’s Run ” is a story of personal adventure and of sympathetic horsemanship which might serve as a model for stories with equine heroes. It is very stirring, but not more thrilling than the narratives of those audacious climbs in the Sierra. In these you safely share all the author’s peril, and, what is better, you enjoy with him the glory of scenery which seems never to have been printed before. The light, the color, the vastness of that sky and earth, which seem another sky and earth from ours, have transferred themselves to Mr. King’s page with a freshness and force that give us a new sense of the value of descriptive writing.

To find Mr. Hayne, who has a distinct note of his own, emulating Mr. William Morris in music which the latter has identified with his name, is a little curious, for Mr. Hayne is a poet of no recent repute, and Mr. Morris is a passing poetical fashion who ought logically to have infected none but the youngest of the tuneful tribe. There is a loss in this kind of thing which ought not to be, and yet must be. The poet who takes another’s intellectual attitude forbids recognition in himself of his own merits : the beauty which he actually creates goes for nothing when it is evoked with a borrowed spell. In the many Tennysonized poems of our time ever so much of grace and sweetness merely wearies, which might have pleased if it had found more original expression. Because “ Daphles ” and “ The Wife of Brittany” strongly suggest Mr. Morris’s rhymed stories, we cannot praise them, though they have fineness and excellences that belong to Mr. Hayne. They form nearly a third part of his volume, in which, however, there is enough of his own in manner as well as substance abundantly to redeem it. In fact, but for this cant Morrisward in the two poems named, it attests its author’s right to be as vigorously as any book of verse that we have lately read. We fancy, or we find, new flavors, — flavors of the Southern air and soil,—not only in those poems which celebrate with uncommon temperance and dignity the Southern side in memories of the war, but those that express deeper, calmer, and more personal feeling; and we are certain of graces that belong to Mr. Hayne as a poet, if not as a Southern poet. Many of the pieces are in a pensive key, — thoughtfully sad ; and one of the most pensive of these appears to us one of the best of all the poems : —

“A SUMMER MOOD.

“ ‘ Now, by my faith, a gruesome MOOD, for summer!’THOMAS HEYWARD (1597).

The “ Story of Glaucus the Thessalian ” is a delicate and tenderly sympathetic version of the beautiful legend to which we owe one of the loveliest and wisest of Mr. Lowell’s poems, namely, his “ Rhoecus,” and the contrast of the two performances is a curious and instructive little study, — so different are the meanings of the fable evolved by the New England and the South Carolinian poets, and so diverse is the temperament in poems that flow to a common music from the same source. Another noticeable piece of Mr. Hayne’s is “ Cambyses and the Macrobian Bow,” which is of yet another mood, and of which the reader will hardly fail to acknowledge the power, however he may shrink from its utter painfulness.

Mr. Hayne’s prevailing attitude is that of meditative introspection, neither cheerful nor uncheerful, but certainly not wanting in a fine spiritual courage, and he touches many themes that lie nearest his own heart with tenderness and grace. He has given us a volume which ought to be cordially welcomed.

“ Ollanta ” is the title of a translation of what seems to be an indubitably genuine Peruvian play, and on that account is more interesting than for any purely literary merit. Our knowledge of the Quichua tongue is too slight to enable us to judge of the accuracy with which the work of translation has been done. Of the smoothness, however, we can say, that in general it resembles the ordinary versions of an Italian or German opera libretto. The action of the drama, too, reminds us of the conventional freedom of the modern opera, indeed, of the opera bouffe. For instance, the plot by which the rebellious army is captured is very nearly identical with Fritz’s strategical success in La Grande Duchesse, under very similar circumstances. Some lines — for example,

are not of simply archæological interest. The same may be said of this song, in spite of its ruggedness : —

Not so poetical is the wail over the heroine who has been imprisoned for some years. It runs as follows: —

There is nothing in the collected verse of Mr. Butler better than the poem of “ Nothing to Wear,” with which some fifteen years ago he won a sudden and costly distinction. It was costly because it evidently forbade him to do anything else in a direction for which he was peculiarly fitted. A less remarkable success would have left him free to write other and better poems of the same kind without fear of self-rivalry. As it was he was a man of too much sense not to make his next poem entirely different, and so we lost by the very triumph of his first effort the most brilliant social satirist, in a light, easy way, of whom we have yet had the promise. Nothing could console the bereaved public, which was doubtless waiting to cry down the next satire because it had cried up first ; and it refused to honor the deeper feeling, which, hinted in “ Nothing to Wear,” is so explicit in “ Two Millions,” “At Richmond,” and other pieces. We forget now how great a vogue the successful poem had ; how it was printed in all the newspapers, and illustrated, and imitated, and parodied, and quoted, and stolen ; how it added a type and a typical name to our scanty stock. Mr. Harte’s “Ah Sin ” is the only poetical creation which has eclipsed the splendor of Miss Flora McFlimsy’s popularity, — if it indeed did so much ; and taken upon its own level it is impossible to deny (its great, success to the contrary notwithstanding) that “ Nothing to Wear” is a poem of singular merits,—simple in form, light in touch, with the stylish air of the fine world about it, and the heart of humanity in it. It stands alone in our literature. Now that time has passed, is it not possible for Mr. Butler to do something else like it, and even better ?

As the mind of man cannot well conceive of a joke four hundred pages long, one must suppose M. Figuier in earnest in his book called “ The To-morrow of Death,” though otherwise there is little reason to think so. What he means to tell us of the life hereafter is that tolerably good men when they die enter the enveloping ether of their respective planets, and after an indefinite series of deaths are fitted for immortal bliss in the bosom of the sun. As for the souls of the bad and of infants, they at once return to earth in new-born beings, and continue to do so until they are good enough or wise enough for superhumanity. M. Figuier goes at some length into a description of the solar system, and contends that all the planets are inhabited ; but the point at which he unites his theories of future life to the facts of science does not reveal itself. However, there is no objection to his theories, — or not more than to other wholly unfounded vagaries. The book is curious and momentarily interesting.

FRENCH AND GERMAN.²

WE can hardly recommend too strongly to our readers M. Villetard’s Histoire de l’ Internationale. It is not necessary to raise the cry of alarm in this country, to represent the State House of Boston full of beardless generals who amuse themselves and advance humanity by shooting members of the General Court on the Beacon Street Mall; but it is worth every one’s while to give some consideration to one of the most serious questions now calling for the attention of the civilized nations of the world. This may seem a strong statement, but we fancy that the facts will not belie it. A revolution is threatened, that boldly avows its determination to subvert all the institutions of society. A small part of its programme is to confiscate all mines, quarries, railroads, lands, forests, houses, mills, machines, and tools for the benefit of societies of the International, who are to work them all for their own profit. Religion, of course, is to be abolished by statute. All wars are to be put an end to, except those of workmen against the so-called middle classes. But when the middle classes are beaten, give up all claim to capital, and abjure their religion, then we are told by the socialist papers, as quoted on page 145 of the book we are discussing, they will be allowed to work, “ and,” if they are unable to work, “as will probably be the case with a great many, since they have not learned to use their two hands, well, well, — we ’ll give them soup-tickets.”

Such is the peculiar nature of most of the plans of the International, that any unprejudiced statement of their designs — divested of the pompous phrases about humanity, etc., which are of use to fascinate those who go to sleep every night with the expectation of finding all mankind purged of its errors, and hastening to its work in long white robes, the next morning — seems like an unfair burlesque; and, indeed, it would be extremely easy to turn a great deal of what they say into ridicule. But ridicule has never won a convert, even in France. It is impossible to believe that the great numbers who have joined the International have done so out of a wanton desire of change. Their tenacity is too bitter to allow of such an explanation for a moment. The workmen have just grounds of complaint, but they also have unjust grounds, and one should not hold his neighbor, who has let his ox stray over his flower-bed, responsible for the high taxes, sudden changes in the temperature, or the present drought. This is an example of the errors of the society: it regards the capitalist as the source of all the woes incidental to human nature ; and the capitalist, on his side, is only too ready to feel that being guiltless of so many, he is guiltless of all. At the foundation of the society, about eight or ten years ago, its claims were temperate and wise, at least in comparison with its latest manifestation, the Commune of Paris. But it bore within its breast the leaven of sedition ; there were the masses who were the victims of their own vices, and demanded to be heard ; there are always demagogues enough who are only too ready to climb aloft by pandering to the passions of the ignorant ; so that now it looks as if the contest, if it is not staved off by wisdom, will be between the very richest and the most degraded classes, and without profit to the hard-working laborer who is hated by those beneath him and with whom he will be confounded by those who are first attacked lay the principles of the International. But, meanwhile, we have forgotten M. Villetard’s book. It is a brief, clear, and generally, indeed, remarkably temperate account of the society. His statements are corroborated by its authorized publications. For our entertainment, until the distribution of souptickets, we have, after a very long delay, the novel of Cherbuliez, La Revanche de Joseph Noirel, of which we spoke in the January number. We will once more recommend it most heartily to all, except the young ladies of Boston and vicinity, as an admirable work of fiction.

Of German works we have three volumes of a size and fulness that prove that there is still a quarter of the civilized world where it is felt that all the truth on any given subject cannot be crowded into a magazine article, nor, indeed, into a single volume of a magazine, judging from the size of these before us. The first, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine, by Professor Ludwig Friedlaender, of which the third part has already appeared, is interesting on account of its taking up just that part of Roman history that is generally ignored by the historian who is only concerned in the wars and outside life of the Romans, and of which almost our only information comes to us through scanty notes to the authors generally read. In this third part he discusses Roman luxury, arts, religion, philosophy, etc. Of the Grundsteine einer Allegemeinen Culturgeschichte der Neuesten Zeit, by J. J. Honegger, we have the first part of the third volume, a modest octavo of five hundred ninety-two pages. The subjects on the title-page are “ The Kingdom of July and the Bourgeoisie ” ; those really treated, however, are numberless. The work is, in fact, an encyclopædia of all the names and events in every department of human thought for recent years. There is, moreo er, an index of names, which, alone, makes the book worthy of notice. Of the other prodigious volume, Handbuch der Æstketik, by Joseph Dippel, we hope to be able to say something more next month.

Julius Frauenstädt, the literary executor and faithful disciple of Schopenhauer, has published a sort of dictionary of elegant extracts from the philosopher’s various writings, called the Schopenhauer-Lexicon. Some four or five years ago he edited a volume of Lichtstrahlen, which might very well serve as an introduction to the works of this writer, who, better than any writer we know, expresses the maladie du siècle, and not by any means in empty wailings, but with the coolness and hard-headedness of one who avenges himself by the relentlessness of his exposition for all the suffering that he feels so acutely. He is, in fact, the philosopher of pessimism, and he never wearies of preaching the vanity of life, the nothingness of existence, but with as much joy at the gloominess of the picture he draws as if it Were a popular novel with numerous weddings following eventful flirtations. Seriously, however, it is a mistake that a writer of Schopenhauer’s power, who has had so great an influence on the current thought of the day in Germany, should be almost entirely unknown in England and America. His works are all interesting, they are well written, indeed, he is almost the only German who has any idea of what style is in prose ; and even if pessimism is an erroneous way of regarding the universe, — as what ism is not ? — it is one that well deserves a hearing. He has written on almost every subject, and left a mass of witty and wise, if cynical, remarks. For example, we quote the following from the first page we open of the Lichtstrahlen. “ To judge for one’s self is the privilege of but few ; authority and example lead the rest. They see with others’eyes and hear with others’ ears. Hence, it is very easy to think as all the world is now thinking ; but to think as all the world will thirty years hence, is not everybody’s business..... For practical life genius is as useful as a telescope at the theatre..... Great writers change themselves into each one of the characters that is to be represented, and speak in them like ventriloquists, now in the hero, and at once in a young, innocent maiden, with equal truth and naturalness, as Shakespeare and Goethe. Writers of the second rank change the characters to be represented into themselves, as Byron ; whence the secondary characters are as lifeless as the main characters in the works of the mediocre.” Here are some joyous words on the nothingness of existence, taken from the second volume of the Parerga und Paralipomena, page 304 : “ Our existence has no ground nor basis upon which it rests, except the swiftly vanishing presence. Hence its form is essentially motion, without the possibility of rest for which we are always striving. It is like one running down-hill, if he wished to stop, he would have to fall, and he only keeps himself upright by perpetual running..... So unrest is the type of existence. In such a world, where there is no stability of any kind, where enduring condition is possible, but everything is involved in perpetual whirl and change, all are hastening, flying, keeping straight on the rope by unceasing shirking and moving,— in such a world happiness is not a thing to be thought of..... In the first place, no one is happy, but every one is striving all his life long for some imaginary happiness, which he seldom attains, and if he does, only to be undeceived : as a rule, however, every one reaches port at last, shipwrecked and dismasted. But then it makes no difference whether one has been happy or unhappy in a life, which has only consisted of a vanishing present and which is now at an end.” We hope most heartily that either Schopenhauer’s complete, works or that some extracts may be translated into English. Judging from their success in Germany, it seems probable that they would find many readers in America. Lütj Anna oder en Stückschen von em un ehr is the title of a pretty little story in platt-Deutsch by Joachim Mähl. It lacks the graceful humor of those of Fritz Reuter, but it has a certain attractive sentimentality that make it better than most of those novels in High-German that we have lately seen. Das Hausgesetz, by Burghard von Cramm, however, is not absolutely bad when one considers what most German novels are. It might, perhaps, be recommended to beginners who are tired of the Reader and the conventional plays. They will have a chance to improve their German and to see for themselves the peculiar feudalism still so prominent in Germany. One sentence, at least, amused us. As may be seen, it is towards the end of the tale : “ The Prince drew her to his breast and pressed the first kiss to her lofty brow.”