Books of the Month

Fiction. Sought and Found, translated from the German of Golo Raimund by Adelaide S. Buckley. (Funk & Wagnalls.) A sentimental tale, in which life looks like a Dusseldorf painting, highly glazed.—The Hands of a Clock, by William M. Runkel. (The American Publishing House, New York.) Dickens is responsible for this story as regards manner, but not for its incoherence or its dim English. — The Truth about Clement Ker, by George Fleming, has been reissued by Roberts Brothers in their Handy Library. — Alma, or Otonkah’s Daughter, a story of the 20,000 Sioux, by Gay Waters. (T. S. Denison, Chicago.) An attempt at setting forth in the form of fiction the outrages upon Indians committed by white men. It is the shriekingest piece of literature we have met with for some time. — The Immortal, by Alphonse Daudet. (Rand, McNally & Co.) This seems to be the same translation as that which appeared in the Universal Review.— Kady, by Patience Stapleton. (Bclford, Clarke & Co.) A novel of the frontier, with the noble, uneducated girl and the weak but finally successful Eastern lover. — Recent numbers of Harper’s Franklin Square Library are The Weaker Vessel, by D. Christie Murray, and Toilers of Babylon, by B. L. Farjeon. — Recent numbers of Ticknor’s Paper Series are : The Desmond Hundred ; A Woman of Honor, by H. C. Bunner ; Forced Acquaintances, by Edith Robinson ; Under Green Apple Boughs, by Helen Campbell; and Fools of Nature, by Alice Brown. — Roberts Brothers have brought out what we believe to be the first American reprint of Leigh Hunt’s Romances of Real Life. It is for the most part a compilation, hut Leigh Hunt had a knack of making even his quotations delightful.— Miss Howard is a novelist whose work is pretty sure to interest and to pique curiosity. She has made one or two decided hits ; she has made at least one failure. To which class must we assign The Open Door ? (Houghton.) We are not sure that it will be called a decided success, but it is likely to interest readers. As a story it is very simple. A German count meets with an accident in his early manhood, and becomes a cripple. The lady who would probably have married him is thenceforth the heartless woman of the world in the book. His mother is an old frump, who lavishes all her tenderness on a lap-dog, and this lap-dog is thrust disagreeably upon one at every turn in the story. The mother has a way of taking on young girls as companions, expending her foolish fondness on them, and then tiring of them and throwing them aside. At last comes along the fifteenth of them, a pure, high-spirited girl, a baroness remotely connected with the family, who refuses to be a sycophant, and marches through the story with uncompromising sturdiness, dealing out truth on every hand. Early in the novel it is clear that the crippled count will marry her, and the reader is not for a moment deceived by the obstacles that spring up. The countess tries to marry her to a German officer, but she disdains him, and he sets about seducing the baroness’s maid. Here comes the one notable passage in the book: the baroness at night goes to an outcast’s room, whither her silly maid has gone to meet the officer, and has there a long intellectual and sentimental struggle with the outcast and the maid, finally winning the game. But the passage is superficially strong ; it is showy rather than genuine. Indeed, this is the term to be applied to the entire novel. The manner of the book is forced, exaggerated, with occasional brilliancy, but with the glitter of tin-foil rather than of precious metal. There is little of the reserved power which made Aulnay Tower a book out of the common. — John Charáxes, a lale of the Civil War in America, bv Peter Boylston. (Lippincott.) An inartistic novel, written apparently by a man of intellectual strength, so untrained in the writing of fiction as to make very elementary mistakes. It is a disjointed book, interesting by snatches, but tumbling to pieces in the reader’s hands. Variety of scene alone cannot save a book from being tiresome ; on the contrary, if a writer sweeps into a novel all his random observations, and makes haste to deliver through his characters all sorts of opinions upon politics and theology, and at the same time to tie and untie knots of relationship and rattle off adventures, he is likely to succeed, as in this case, in making a fifty-cent chaos. — Esther Denison, by Adeline Sergeant (Holt), is the latest issue in the Leisure Hour Series. The writer feels earnestly, and with a simple theme, a girl coming in between lover and loved, manages to manufacture a story which is carefully thought out, and contains a good deal of the effect of discipline upon life. One has a respect for the author, even if the air of the book is somewhat too intense. — The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, or an Irish Romance of the Last Century, by J. A. Froude. (Scribners.) Mr. Fronde has had so much practice for novel-writing in his histories and travels that it is not at all surprising that his first acknowledged piece of fiction should be anything but ’prentice work. He deals, moreover, with public events, and does not make too heavy demands on the interest of the reader in mere men and women. — Between Two Loves, by Amelia E. Barr. (Dodd, Mead A Co.) rlhe two loves are lover and brother; and though the girl is ready to give her life to her brother, he does not want it, so after much suffering her lover gets her. Mrs. Barr’s strength lies in her masculine use of a few simple, elemental characters; she has a vigorous touch, and she does not weaken the force of her drawing by putting in a great many decorative flourishes. — The Pretty Sister of José, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. (Scribners.) A willful girl, with a dull, faithful brother, is beset with love by a dashing matador, whom she coolly dismisses. Her lover gone, her love comes, and now she nearly dies in her passion for him. The whole story is a sort of literary ballet, with Spanish dresses and guitar and fan.— Dragon’s Teeth, from the Portuguese, by Mary J. Serrano. (Ticknor.) Although the translator puts her name only on the title-page, she is not wholly unjust to her author, lor she gives due credit to Eça de Queiros in a brief introductory note. One enters a Portuguese novel with some hopefulness, but when he comes out of this one he is bound to confess that the Portuguese variety of human nature offers no great surprise or specially new pleasure. There is the same cousin who interferes between man and wife. The flavor of the book is foreign, but that is all. — Sam Level’s Camps; Uncle ’Lisha s Friends under Bark and Canvas, by Rowland E. Robinson. (forest and Stream Publishing Company, New York.) We were struck by the native tang in Mr, Robinson’s former book. This possesses much the same quality. The scenes are a little more out-of-doors, but the French Canadian and the Vermonter are still the chief figures, and there is the same nervous, somewhat angular directness.— The Sphinx in Aubrey Parish, by N. H. Chamberlain. (Cupples & Hurd.) A queer, inconsequential book, the work apparently of a man who dreams out his story, and is forever trying to fix the outlines so that they shall not be too blurred. — Lady Bluebeard (Harpers) is a novel in which the author makes Eastern travel an excuse for fictitious philandering. — French Janet, by Sarah Tytler. (Harpers.) A fantastic story, with a spook for a heroine. — A Transaction in Hearts, by Edgar Saltus. (Belford, Clarke & Co.) Mr. Saltus keeps just ahead of the subscribers to the Century dictionary with his iserine eyes, other eyes “ of that green-black which is noticeable in dysodile coal,” his akosmism, his fetching young women, lancinating neuralgia, rememorate, and similar verbal bricabrac. The heroine is dreadfully undulating’; she undulates at the slightest notice; her intonation, even, is undulant. Then she has a cleft in her neck, and the man who is a clergyman and her sister’s husband sits in his study and imagines her going to bed. The story is moral, — oh, very moral; all the sin is committed in the desire ; the sinner is held back by circumstance ; the good are hypocritical, the fair are venomous, and the writer’s smile is a sneer. What a devilish world this is. according to Mr. Saltus!

Poetry. In Poems and Translations (Scribner & Welford) Mr. W. J. Linton has brought together in one volume the chief portions of two previous collections of verse, — Claribel and Other Poems, and Love Lore, works originally issued in limited editions, and now not procurable. To the earlier and well-known pieces the author has added a number of spirited translations, mostly from the French, and here printed f r the first time. Among the selections from the volume of 1865 (Claribel, etc.), we miss the very noble threnody on Albert Darasz. We wish that this had been included. Those who know Mr. Linton only as a masterly engraver will have to make room for him in their regard as a true poet also. His briefer lyrics have a felicity wholly their own, with here and there an Elizabethan touch that in no way detracts from their genuineness. The book, which is limited to an edition of seven hundred copies, is tastefully printed and bound, and has for frontispiece an admirable photogravure portrait of the author. The eleventh and twelfth volumes of Robert Browning’s complete works (Macmillan) contain Balaustion’s Adventure, Fifine at the Fair, Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, etc.

Literature and Criticism. French Traits, an Essay in Comparative Criticism, hy W. C. Brownell (Scribner’s Sons), is a reprint, with additions, of the series of charming papers which lately made one of the features of Scribner’s Magazine. — The Banquet of Dante Alighieri, translated by Katharine Hillard. (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London.) Miss Hillard’s translation of the Conirto has all the appearance of being painstaking work ; if we miss a little the grave sweetness of the poet, we may fairly charge the lack to a less liquid language. Her introduction is modest and helpful, her annotations are not cumbersome, and altogether the book is a welcome addition to Dante literature.—Prolegomena to In Memoriam, by Thomas Davidson, with an Index to the Poem. (Houghton.) Mr. Davidson finds In Memoriam one of the great world-poems, and since it. deals with the profoundest truths of life he easily finds justification in a close philosophical study of the poem, drawing illustration and commentary from other poets and from the masters of philosophy. His work is professedly more penetrating and comprehensive than Mr. Genung’s analysis, but the two books complement each other, one dealing more with the structure of the poem as a work of art, the other with the underlying thought developed. The index is in reality a concordance. — Essays of William Hazlett, selected and edited, with introduction, by Frank Carr (W. Scott, London), is a little volume to be commended.

Biography. The collectors of Americana owe a new debt to Mr. W. S. Baker for his Bibliotheca Washingtoniana, a Descriptive List of the Biographies and Biographical Sketches of George Washington. (R. M. Lindsay.) The value of Mr. Baker’s work in this sort has long ago been recognized. — Life of Friedrich Schiller, by Henry W. Nevinson. (Walter Scott, London.) A forcible little work, which is packed with biographical and critical matter. The biographer, while sturdily independent, does not annoy the reader by extraneous comment, but keeps well to his task. Like other books in the series (Great Writers), this is well equipped with index and bibliography.

— Life of General Lafayette, with a Critical Estimate of his Character and Public Acts, by Bayard Tuekerman. In two volumes. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) Mr. Tuckerman had abundant materials at his disposal, and appears to have used them diligently and with a praiseworthy method. The book is not brilliant, neither is it commonplace ; it is well ordered, and the narrative is straightforward and clear. We wish the author had given a more minute index, and we wish the publishers bad not made the two volumes so stiff and intractable.— Hosea Ballou, a Marvelous Life-Story, by Oscar F. Safford. (Universalist Publishing House, Boston.) An enthusiastic study of a man who attacked Calvinism in New England very sharply. No one can know the religious and social history of New England who has not made himself more or less familiar with the protest which was uttered by Murray and Ballou. It is already historical, and Dr. Safford’s book would probably be impossible a quarter of a century hence ; its writer is still within the glow of Ballou’s personal presence.

— David Livingstone, by Thomas Hughes, and Henry the Fifth, by A. J. Church, are the latest additions to Macmillan’s interesting series of brief biographies of English Men of Action.