Comment on New Books
Fiction. Miss Stuart’s Legacy, by Mrs. F. A. Steel. (Macmillan.) Those who had read with a quickly awakened and constantly increasing interest certain anonymous short stories of Indian life, which were not Kipling’s, and yet could be compared only with his, felt that they had discovered the author when Mrs. Steel’s novel began to appear in the same magazine that had printed the earlier tales. Many so-called Indian stories are simply more or less commonplace English fictions with Eastern supernumeraries and stage-settings, but this book is of another sort. The reader at once feels the very atmosphere of the country, while the native portraits — such widely contrasting types as Shunker Das, the Hindu usurer, the brave old soldier, Mahomed Lateef, and the half-savage Pathan, Afzul— are as strongly, vividly, and we feel as truly drawn as are Belle Stuart’s lovers, and the man whom she, in her youthful blindness and foolishness, marries, as her step-sister aptly puts it, by mistake. Mrs. Steel’s style is easy, graphic, and at need vigorous and forcible, and her book, though a first novel, shows in neither construction nor manner the usual marks of inexperience. The reader feels confidence not only in the author’s exceptional knowledge of her subject, and in her originality and insight, but also in the literary skill without which the other good gifts would be of little avail. — To Right the Wrong, by Edna Lyall. (Harpers.) In a former novel Edna Lyall gave a carefully considered, and in some respects vivid study of Algernon Sidney, and in this book John Hampden is the most important figure, if not the nominal hero. The reader at once feels that no pains have been spared to present him reverently in his habit as he lived, though the author has hardly the strength to give full effectiveness to what is evidently a just conception of the man. The parliamentary party has usually fared so hardly at the hands of English novelists that one is glad that so popular a writer is such an earnest champion of its cause, and so sensible of the great qualities of the noblest of its leaders. It should be added that she writes temperately, and studiously endeavors to weigh fairly the good and ill on each side. But the story, clever and interesting as it is, lacks the last touch which makes the true historical romance. It is a tale told about a certain epoch, not the narrative of one who is for the time being of it. This sometimes makes the movement seem labored, even though exciting incidents abound, and occasionally gives to seventeenth-century opinions and speech a flavor of the nineteenth. — The Delectable Duchy, Stories, Studies, and Sketches, by “ Q.” (Macmillan.) It is the Duchy of Cornwall that gives the author his delight, and provides him with stories for communicating it to others. Something of the sort that Mr. Barrie at his window has done for Thrums, “ Q,” running a slenderer thread of connection through his book, does here for his Cornish villagers and fishermen. It is surely to Mr. Couch’s honor that the bits of romance, humor, tradition, and tragedy which he relates seem to be, not invented, but merely reported. Indeed, it appears yet again that if a man has the art to make the medium of himself practically transparent, and tells the true stories of elemental people, he can count upon an audience fit and not few. — The Handsome Humes, by William Black. (Harpers.) With the easy fluency of the teller of many tales, Mr. Black writes of the loves of a son of a squire of high degree, the youngest, brightest, and best of the nine “ handsome Humes,” and the beautiful, well-brought-up daughter of a retired prize-fighter. Naturally, the charming mother of the hero, herself one of “the handsome Hays,” does her best to separate the pair, but her efforts are brought to naught by the devotion and self-abnegation of the ex-pugilist. The story may not linger long in the reader’s memory, but it will pass the time spent in reading it agreeably enough. Though Mrs. Hume comes of a long-descended Border race with an old tower on Teviot-side, the scene of this history is Henley, with an occasional glimpse of Oxford ; a pleasant environment, most pleasantly indicated. — Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons have brought Thomas Nelson Page’s books, with the exception of his juveniles, into a group of four trim volumes: In Ole Virginia, a new title, we believe, given to Marse Chan and Other Stories, On New Found River, Elsket and Other Stories, and his volume of studies The Old South. Mr. Page has given in these books a taste of his quality. We hope he may draw a longbow yet and give us a novel which shall gather in a series of pictures the Virgiuian life which lies just on the horizon of his personal experience. — The Complaining Millions of Men, by Edward Fuller. (Harpers.) “ The complaining millions ! Oh yes, they had had reason enough to complain, Baretta was saying to himself.” And so in very truth may the complaining scores of readers say of their fellowmen, if the specimens Mr. Fuller presents are in any large sense typical. A more common and unpleasant lot than the characters of this novel it would be very difficult to find. The principal person is bent upon “ giving himself” to the people, but so consistently takes every opportunity of being a fool that he brings himself in the end to an insane condition in which he runs amuck with a revolver, and has the good fortune to kill nobody but himself. A familiarity with the less lovely sides of Boston life is evident throughout the story, which loses much more than it gains by the appearance under futilely veiled names of various persons tolerably well known. — Barabbas, a Dream of the World’s Tragedy, by Marie Corelli. (Lippincott.) A book which hardly calls for serious criticism, but of which it may be said that its audacity is equaled only by its bad taste. One marvels that the juxtaposition of the Gospel narrative, and the sensational additions and elaborations in which it is embedded, did not make even the author conscious of the quality of her work. That she evidently fully believes in the supreme sacredness of her theme renders her self-confidence only the more surprising. — Novel Notes, by Jerome K. Jerome. (Holt.) If any one expects in this work a picture of Bookland corresponding to the author’s Stageland, he is doomed to disappointment. Whatever was the original intention of the book, it resolves itself into a series of short stories, many of them mere anecdotes, told by four friends who meet for the ostensible purpose of writing a novel together, but find in the end that they have reached only “ the city of the things men meant to do.” The serious and the humorous are mingled in about equal quantities. In the humor there is, with the modicum of fun, a predominating quality of cheapness ; and though the serious tales never achieve greatness, they are, on the whole, the more satisfying after their kind. — Seven Christmas Eves, being the Romance of a Social Evolution, by Clo Graves, B. C. Farjeon, Florence Marry at, G. Manville Fenn, Mrs. Campbell Praed, Justin Huntly McCarthy, and Clement Scott. (Lippincott.) A composite tale, in which seven writers in turn carry on the story of the rise of two East End child-waifs to a position of honor and affluence. The authors’ names indicate pretty definitely the literary quality of the work, which for the most part, when it is not indifferent Dickensesque, is after the manner of the popular melodrama. — Nibsy’s Christmas, by Jacob A. Riis. (Scribners.) Three short sketches, reflecting scenes of poverty and squalor, with gleams of light from a higher sphere struggling through. Their value is in their sympathy with stricken lives rather than in any artistic power.
Social Science. The Psychic Factors of Civilization, by Lester F. Ward. (Ginn.) Mr. Ward laid the foundations of this work in his Dynamic Sociology. In it he proceeds to elaborate some of the propositions shadowed forth in that, and to determine, if possible, the precise role that mind plays in social phenomena. The result which he reaches is interesting and clearly put. As society has overthrown the rule of brute force by the establishment of government, as it has supplanted autocracy by aristocracy, and that by democracy, and as democracy is giving way before plutocracy, so Mr. Ward sees a final triumph of sociocracy, a stronger power than any preceding it, by which the whole of society will think and act for the whole. It is not quite clear just how the application of scientific processes to government is to be brought about, but Mr. Ward contemplates the human mind as containing the potency of this authority. — Sub-Cœlum, a Sky-Built Human World, by A. P. Russell. (Houghton.) When so many writers at the end of the century vie in describing what may be called Sub-Cellar, a Dug-Up Human World, it is a satisfaction to come upon so reasonable a plea as this for hypæthral existence. Mr. Russell, whose books have shown him a close reader of human life in literature, here discloses himself as a student of human life in society. There is a mellowness, a wholesome belief in the possibilities of ideals and conformity to those ideals, which argues that Mr. Russell is not a young man. If he were a dismal, pessimistic writer, we should reasonably infer that he was still under age. For a thoroughgoing disbeliever commend us to the young man. Our poets in the minor key are all young.
History and Biography. Life and Art of Edwin Booth, by William Winter. (Macmillan.) The Life, which occupies somewhat more than half the volume, suffers, as most lives of actors do, from a profusion of incidents which are no longer of interest, mere recital of occasions of acting, but it contains also some interesting explanations of that side of Booth’s life which was not wholly understood by the public : his attempt, that is, at business management. The section devoted to his art will be read with more attention since it consists of delineations of the great characters he impersonated. In spite of the somewhat fragmentary look of the book, it is probably as good a memorial as we are likely to get, and certainly gives delightful glimpses of Booth’s personal relations. — Jenny Lind the Artist, 1820—1851, by H. S. Holland and W. S. Rockstro. (Scribners.) This is a condensation, with loss chiefly of the more technical portion, of the two-volume memoir by the same writers. A like affectionate strain pervades the book, and the reader never forgets that he is confronting a woman of exceptional emotions rather than a great artist. The book, nevertheless, gives a great many interesting glimpses of the musical world as well as of Jenny Lind’s domestic circle, and may be regarded as a pretty faithful picture of her life, even if certain lights are greatly heightened. The American reader will be disappointed at the absence of details regarding her career in this country.— Seventy Years of Irish Life, being Anecdotes and Reminiscences, by W. R. Le Fanu. (Macmillan.) After the strenuous “earnestness” and the cynicism, real or sham, which are considered appropriate notes even in the lighter literature of the end of the century, it is refreshing to meet this gay, good-humored, and amusing volume. It is rather remarkable that Mr. Le Fanu should have written his “ first and only book ” in his seventy-eighth year ; but he has long enjoyed in private life a well-won reputation as an admirable teller of Irish stories, and he proves himself as good a raconteur here, whether of anecdotes or autobiographic reminiscences. The narrative is always easy in style ; it touches many aspects of Irish life, showing everywhere keen observation and abundant humor, and it is steadily and agreeably readable from beginning to end. Happily, the book deals as little as may be with politics, though the son of a clergyman of the former Church of Ireland, in detailing the family experiences — some of them unpleasant enough — during the tithe war, cannot quite avoid the subject, and his last chapter rapidly but clearly sums up the public events and agitations in Ireland during his lifetime, closing with some eminently sane remarks on the present situation.— Women of Versailles, The Last Years of Louis XV., by Imbert de SaintAmand. Translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. (Scribners.) This volume,— in some respects one of the best of the SaintAmand series, — though its subject is the close of the reign of Louis XV., is really the record of the first act in the tragedy of Marie Antoinette’s life. The writer gives, with the usual admixture of moralizing, a brief and effective sketch of society in the court and city at this epoch, and traces the career of Madame Du Barry, thus showing very definitely what was the world into which the child archduchess was taken from the simple, natural, kindly life of the household of Maria Theresa, — as sad and ominous an exchange as marriage ever brought to a woman. Of course the author depends mainly on the invaluable letters of the Austrian ambassador, Mercy-Argenteau, to the Empress for his picture of the life of the Dauphiness, — letters which are a veritable journal of the daily existence of the frank, warm-hearted, impulsive young girl, already surrounded by enemies. — William Blake, his Life, Character, and Genius, by Alfred T. Story. (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London; Macmillan, New York.) The materials for a life and study of Blake were made even scantier than need be by the burning of the manuscripts and other possessions bequeathed by Mrs. Blake to her husband’s friend, Tatham, whose fellow-Irvingites persuaded him that, because Blake’s works were inspired, the devil must have been their inspiration. There is perhaps, then, a certain appropriateness in the fact that this comprehensive book on the strangest of men is small in bulk. It is not ideal in arrangement or distinguished in style, and it lacks that Open Sesame of usefulness in modern books, an index ; yet it would have to be poorly done indeed to make its subject uninteresting, and that the book surely is not.— Some Further Recollections of a Happy Life. Selected from the Journals of Marianne North. (Macmillan.) Readers of the two volumes which originally gave a record of Miss North’s varied journeys and her enthusiasm for botany will not be sorry to see a third, which fills out the tale by entering upon more distinctly European experiences. The same bright, good-natured enjoyment of whatever turned up, which must have made Miss North an unfailingly enjoyable companion, characterizes this volume, which is edited by Miss North’s sister, Mrs. John Addington Symonds.— A Sketch of the History of the Apostolic Church, by Oliver J. Thatcher. (Houghton.) There is no suggestion of the question of an apostolic succession in this book, for it is concerned merely with the beginnings of Christianity. A large portion of the work is devoted to St. Paul, whose career is followed with sympathy and illuminating knowledge. It is good to find the “ scientific spirit ” applied to labors such as Mr. Thatcher’s without the extinction of all other spirit. — The Athenian Constitution, by George Willis Botsford, is Number IV. of Cornell Studies in Classical Philology. (Ginn.) The treatise may have been suggested by the recent discovery of Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, but it is a full and explicit study of the development of that constitution, and, incidentally, of the external conditions which finally wrought the downfall of the city. It bears the mark of close examination. — Messrs. Putnam’s Sons have added to their Library of American Biography Irving’s Life and Voyages of Columbus, as condensed by the author from his larger work. The book, which is produced from entirely new plates, is printed in large, clear type, and has a generous supply of well-selected illustrations which really illustrate, most of them being reproduced or redrawn from old prints. Science. The Germ-Plasm, a Theory of Heredity, by August Weismann. Translated by W. Newton Parker and Harriet Rönnfeldt. (Scribners.) An important volume in the Contemporary Science Series. The author’s preface is an ingenuous and effective bit of mental autobiography, and the caution of this great naturalist may be commended to those men of science who get their penny trumpets out and rush to the street corner the moment their little theory looks like an egg. The free use of italics in the book, to mark the emphatic sentences, will enable a superficial reader to catch at the course of argument and the specific conclusions ; but superficial readers will hardly tackle the book, we think. Superficial reader, have you any notion what an id is ? — Photography, Indoors and Out, by Alexander Black. (Houghton.) Mr. Black describes his book as one for amateurs ; and he plainly respects that class, for he assumes an intelligent interest not only in the practical use of the camera, but in the history of the development of photography, and in the physical laws of optics which underlie the art. The book is a straightforward, agreeable history and handbook, the most practical and the most comprehensive one of its class that we have yet seen ; free from confusing terminology, yet precise and explicit.
Poetry. If the question of annexation comes to be considered in the realm of verse, and if the matter of production goes on as it has been going of late, Canada will be in a fair way of annexing the States. An American magazine rarely appears nowadays without a stave from the Canadian singing-birds ; and their songs so often have in them some quality, rugged or mystical, of the north that it is no wonder they are welcome. Now the books of Canadian verse are coming to us, one after another, with great frequency. Of recent volumes, Charles G. D. Roberts’s Songs of the Common Day (Longmans) is one of the best. His themes, with the exception of that of Ave ! an Ode for the Centenary of Shelley’s Birth, are drawn mainly from simple aspects of life and nature about him, and in the sober manner of his Muse one feels a true interpretation of the dignity, not to say austerity of Canadian scenes. Even to Shelley analogies are effectively drawn from nature as it appears in Canada. The many sonnets in the book present a body of work well above the average of its sort in merit. — Passion is hardly to be expected as a product of Canada, and no more than in Mr. Roberts’s volume is it to be found in Duncan Campbell Scott’s The Magic House and Other Poems. (J. Durie & Son, Ottawa.) These verses show considerably less of maturity and force, but many of them are agreeable in their simplicity of spirit and form. One would think of Wordsworth as Mr. Scott’s favorite and model. And by the way, there is another and less serious suggestion of the Lake School in the young Canadians’ fashion of feeling themselves bound together, and of dedicating and singing to one another. It is very pretty. Another word of Mr. Scott’s book : its form, for which Edinburgh may be thanked, is charming. But is it a desirable innovation to print the verses which give a book its title in the middle of the volume ? — Still another Canadian singer is William P. McKenzie, whose Songs of the Human (Hart & Co., Toronto) found in the “ home talent ” of its publishers far less skill in the manufacture of books. There is a good measure of vigor and feeling, largely religious, in what Mr. McKenzie has written. In mastery in the art of versemaking there is still something left to be desired. — Contemporary Scottish Verse, edited, with an Introduction, by Sir George Douglas, Bart. (Walter Scott, Limited, London.) By way of contrast, this new volume of the Canterbury Poets Series contains Alexander Anderson’s delightful nursery lines, Cuddle Doon, and passages from James Thomson’s City of Dreadful Night. But contrast is the world’s fashion at present, and except for the dialect and rhythms of Burns scattered through this book it might indeed be a collection of the best contemporary verse of any English-speaking people. Men are thinking the same things in Australia and America, and saying them, too, in much the same way, as in Scotland. It raises the average of any anthology, however, to have among its sources such men as Mr. Lang and Mr. Stevenson. — Italian Lyrists of Today, Translations from Contemporary Italian Poetry, with Biographical Notices, by G. A. Greene. (Elkin Mathews & John Lane, London ; Macmillan, New York.) A poor idea of the individual qualities of poets is to be gained from scanty selections even in their original language. When they are all put into another language, and all by one man, it is best not to let one’s expectations run high. To the biographical comments upon the thirty-four Italians treated in the book it owes its value, for it would be hard to say just where else a searcher after the truth about all these singers, especially the large number of younger ones, could find it in English. — Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, of Portland, to whom we have been indebted for more than one carefully edited and wellprinted piece of literature, brings out in a Bibelot Series two elongated books : Songs of Adieu, a Little Book of Finalé and Farewell, and Old World Lyrics, a Little Book of Translations. We cannot say that we greatly admire the format of these little books and the affectation of damaged old type on the title-page, but the selections — mainly from contemporaneous writers, at least so far as the English versions and the English songs go—are excellent, and give a very good notion of what may be called the latest mode rather than the latest fashion in verse. — Orchard Songs, by Norman Gale. (Elkin Mathews & John Lane, London ; Putnams, New York.) One cannot quite get away from the feeling that Mr. Gale tries to sing himself into Arcadia, rather than that his songs issue from a pastoral land already existing even as a region made distinctly clear to the imagination. His Chloes and Strephons, in spite of his Defence, “ written on being charged with undue frankness,” do not appear as quite the guileless children of nature Mr. Gale would have men think them. Nevertheless, as a writer of verse of the fancy, and as a true lover of nature in her unforbidding moods, he is capable of many a pretty turn of phrase and thought, and in this volume well maintains the good name his Country Muse won him. — Tanagra, an Idyl of Greece, by Gottfried Kinkel. Translated by Frances Heilman. Illustrated with Photogravures from Designs by Edwin H. Blashfield. (Putnams.) Mrs. Heilman introduces this pretty book with a brief memorial sketch of the patriot Kinkel, whose escape from prison, it will be remembered, was effected through the resolution and adroitness of Carl Schurz. The sketch will make the poem even more interesting. It is a graceful piece, which has for its purpose the imaginary explanation of how “the tree of art a fresh young shoot displayed ” when the Tanagra figurines were devised. Mr. Blashfield’s designs show simplicity and purity of line, though the photogravures themselves are not wholly satisfactory. — Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, by Rudyard Kipling. (Macmillan.) The greater part of this book is familiar, and as a “ new edition, with additional poems,” has only to fill a little more completely the place it has made for itself. By the addition of such things as The Ballad of the Bolivar one’s belief that Mr. Kipling’s rhymes are never so much at home as with Tommy Atkins is shaken ; for it would be hard to sing more truly than in the Bolivar verses the song of the common sailor. — Nursery Lyrics, by Mrs. Richard Strachey. (Bliss, Sands & Foster, London.) A little book, lightly illustrated, of genuine mother songs, simple, birdlike sometimes in their free, unconstrained ripple of melody, often delightfully humorous, and absolutely free from cheap sentiment. It is refreshing to find such hearty, spontaneous expression of domestic poetry, and the light touch is often laid upon a really poetic theme. Especially clever are the Variations on Some Nursery Themes ; My Pretty Maid, for instance, being a charming little pastoral. There is a hint now and then of Lear and of Lilliput Levee, and the whole book is so joyous, breezy, and full of good nature that it will be dog-eared in appreciative families. — Pictures from Nature and Life, Poems by Kate Raworth Holmes. Illustrated by Helen E. Stevenson. (McClurg.) A quarto volume of script text, with decorative and other designs. Ten poems marked by simple sentiment are accompanied by sepia-printed pictures of flower, landscape, and figure. The faces seem sometimes to be photographic reproductions. — The Loves of Paul Fenly, by Anna M. Fitch. (Putnams.) Would it not be fairer to author, publisher, and public if some general means could be devised for letting the public know when the author, and when the publisher, assumes the responsibility and expense of bringing forth a book ?
Dictionaries and Books of Reference. Murray’s A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Part VIII. Sect. 1. Crouchmas-Czech completes the letter C and Volume II. (Macmillan.) The article Crown is one of the fullest and most interesting ; indeed, in turning the leaves one is tempted to stop frequently and read the short stories which add much to the value of this remarkable work, as in the account of the limitation of the word “curate, the historical origin of “currant” and of “ crown ” as the name of a coin, the distinctive use of “ culvert,” and the analysis of “ curmudgeon ; ” but of course the special virtue of this dictionary is in its chronologically arranged quotations, minutely credited, by which the meaning of a word and its use may be traced with great accuracy. — The first volume, A-L, of A Standard Dictionary of the English Language (Funk & Wagnails Co.) has appeared. Its descriptive title-page adds, Upon Original Plans designed to give in Complete and Accurate Statement, in the Light of the most recent Advances in Knowledge, and in the readiest Form for Popular Use, the Meaning, Orthography, Pronunciation and Etymology of all the Words and the Idiomatic Phrases in the Speech and Literature of the English - Speaking Peoples. The indefinite article just saves the title from conscious arrogance, and permits the book still to be called The Standard by the public. It is interesting to compare that portion of the dictionary which covers the same words with the part of Murray we have just noticed, inasmuch as neither editor could have availed himself of the other’s labors. Of course Murray’s plan calls for much greater fullness, so that his hundred and four pages against the eighteen of A Standard permit much more explicit treatment. The first word in Murray, “ Crouchmas,” is defined, “ The festival of the Invention of the Cross, observed on May 3,” and a paragraph gives quotations with dates from 13S9 to 1891. In A Standard we read, “Rogation Sunday ; also Rogation week.” But Rogation Sunday is not a fixed feast. The last entry in each under C is “ Czech.” Here A Standard’s definition strikes us as more exact, though ill expressed : “ A person belonging to that branch of the Slavic peoples now residing mainly in Bohemia, but also in Moravia and part of Hungary.” Murray says, “ The native name of the Bohemian people ; Bohemian.” Under “ Crown ” Murray has thirty-four specific meanings, A Standard twenty-four. On the other hand, A Standard, using cuts, is able to make more intelligible the various forms of royal crowns, and an architectural use. The illustrations in A Standard are often very effective, as the full-page grouping in color of gems and precious stones, and another page giving types of horses. There is also a double-page colored group of decorations of honor. It would be idle, in the brief space at our service, to undertake to characterize the work in detail, but it is unquestionably an addition to the library of American dictionaries. The student can dispense with no one of them ; the ordinary reader will be governed by his special needs and the contents of his purse. — The Old Testament and its Contents, by James Robertson. (Randolph.) A neat little handbook, by a competent writer who has made an analytical synopsis with running comment of the books of the Old Testament. The general temper is conservative, but by no means unprogressive, and the book ought to be of real service to those who wish to do what so seldom is done, go straight to the text itself with as little interpretation from commentators as may be. This kind of comment is most helpful, and leaves the reader most self-reliant. — Congressional Manual of Parliamentary Practice, deduced from the Rules and Rulings of the Congress of the United States, by J. Howard Gore. (Bardeen.) A diminutive manual, which does not err by giving the reader alternative judgments. All is positive and direct, and as the arrangement is alphabetical the book ought to be easy to consult.
Religion. The Pilgrim in Old England, by Amory H. Bradford. (Fords, Howard & Hulbert.) A sub-title shows this book to be a review of the history, present condition, and outlook of the Independent (Congregational) churches in England. The little company of Plymouth Pilgrims left behind them many who shared their religious beliefs and aspirations, and who continued in the old country the hard struggle for independency. A sympathetic study of their history, and an account of the present condition of the churches which grew out of their work, could not fail to be interesting. Dr. Bradford is a leader among American Congregationalists, and he not only writes in a spirit of brotherly love and admiration, but also adds value to his book by comparing the English and the American churches in such a way as to bring out clearly the chief points of similarity and of difference. — The Dayspring from on I High, Selections arranged by Emma Forbes Cary. (Houghton.) A day-book upon a well-accepted plan of a bit of Scripture, a poem, a passage in prose, none of them long, and the choice made with reference to preserving the character of the day or season when marked or special. The note of the book is that of a generous communicant of the Roman Church ; the merit lies in the refinement, the thoughtfulness, the sense of delight in what is noble, high bred, and spiritually strong. It is not often that one finds a book of this class of so fine a temper. — The Child’s Day-Book, with Helps toward the Joy of Living and the Beautiful Heaven above, Arranged and Compiled by Margaret Sidney. (D. Lothrop Co.) A quarto, with thirty-one selections in prose and verse, decorative designs, three or four colored prints, and blanks at the end for memoranda on thirty-one days.
Literature. The Birth Life and Acts of King Arthur of his Noble Knights of the Round Table their Marvellous Enquests and Adventures the Achieving of the San Greal and in the End Le Morte Darthur with the Dolourous Death and Departing out of this World of them all. So, without the impertinence of punctuation, runs the title of a new edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s famous book, of which the first volume, in medium quarto, has reached us. The title-page adds, The Text as written by Sir Thomas Malory and imprinted by William Caxton at Westminster the year MCCCCLXXXV and now Spelled in Modern Style. With an Introduction by Professor Rhys and Embellished with Many Original Designs by Aubrey Beardsley. MDCCCXCIII. The publisher, in his zeal to put the book forward, and not himself, retires into a sort of cupboard, and drops the letters of his name about in a casual, negligent manner. They spell “ Dent,” and the reader of the day knows that Mr.
J. M. Dent, of London, has an enthusiasm for the production of beautiful books, especially books which revive both old authors and the drooping spirits of people afflicted with the distemper of contemporaneousness. The generous proportions of the page, the beauty of the type, the readableness of the English, the effectiveness of the initial letters and other decorations, and the intellectual acrobatism of the artist, who now throws himself into the fifteenth century, now lands on his feet in Japan, and now associates with the inhabitants of No Man’s Land, all serve to render this edition of King Arthur a notable one. It is, bj its furnishing, a real piece of ancient tapestry made over into a modern portiere, and to what a beautiful room it admits one ! The lightness of the book to the hand, by the bye, is a marvel. — Tales from Shakespeare, including those by Charles and Mary Lamb, with a continuation by Harrison S. Morris. In four volumes. (Lippincott.) A neat little edition, in which the twenty plays of the Lambs are supplemented by sixteen from the hand of Mr. Morris. This writer, in a very modest preface, recognizes the criticism likely to be passed upon him, and takes the very proper ground that as the Lambs performed their task from a desire to familiarize children with Shakespeare, so he fills out the measure for the same purpose. His work was not, after all, so difficult as might appear, for the work of the Lambs, though not perfunctory, by no means has the spirit of their best writing, and enjoys a somewhat factitious reputation. Mr. Morris is careful and workmanlike, though we think he produces an effect of anachronism by his free use of Mr. Page and Mr. Ford. — The third volume of Pepys’s Diary, edited by H. B. Wheatley (George Bell & Sons, London ; Macmillan, New York), covers the year 1663, and is most amusing for the passages between Pepys and his wife. The jealousy with which he is tormented, the self-humiliation he expresses, and his uneasiness over his own dallyings with temptation offer a singular commentary on the morals and manners of the times. It seems as though the scandal of the court bewitched everybody, high and low. There are two photogravures, one of Sir Peter Lely’s portrait of Pepys, the other a youthful one of Sir Samuel Morland. — The practice of making magazine volumes run from May to October, and November to April, may possibly offer some advantages commercially, though we doubt it, but it is inconvenient otherwise. The Christian world makes its resolutions and begins all over again on January 1 ; it has taken a long while to get rid of March 25, and even The Century Magazine will fail to introduce a new calendar beginning November 1. One must find fault with something, hut after this is said it is easy to praise New Series, Volume XXIV., which begins and ends reprehensibly with a ragged edge of 1893 on either side. The World’s Fair, naturally, is reflected in it ; there is ever so much poetry, one serial novel and one shorter serial tale, with more of Mr. La Farge’s letters from Japan, and the interesting series of reproductions of paintings by American artists. St. Nicholas divides its year into two parts, and has two corresponding volumes. ( The Century Co.) A survey of these nearly one thousand pages leaves one with a strong impression of the very great variety of interests appealed to, and the range of subjects and writers drawn upon. Pictorially one is glad to find frequently a less complex and subtle treatment than in the companion magazine for mature readers, and sorry to see how large a part the photograph plays. The hopelessly unseleetive capability of the camera makes it specially unfit for use in producing pictures for the young. — A. C. McClurg & Co. publish neat editions of Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and Thackeray’s The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century. Both books are innocent of apparatus of any sort, save that Sartor has an index. — Queechy, by Elizabeth Wetherell. Illustrated by Frederick Dielman. (Lippincott.) Forty years and more since this book was published ! A war has been fought since, and yet Fleda’s tears arc not yet dried. In spite of the defects of these oldfashioned stories, this and The Wide, Wide World, they are vastly more wholesome than much that passes for better fiction today, and they have certainly an inborn refinement. — Our Village, by Mary Russell Mitford. (Webster.) A neat little edition of a book which, itself derivative, has been the cause of many books, some more famous. Cranford, for example, is the more beautiful daughter of a beautiful mother.
Travel. To Gipsyland, written by Elizabeth Robins Pennell, and illustrated by Joseph Pennell. (The Century Co.) It is a far cry from Philadelphia to Hungary ; but it is true Philadelphia that the author draws as the scene of the first firing of her imagination by the Romany folk ; and it is true Hungary to which, with her sketching husband, she goes to see the gipsy at home. The book is written and the pictures are drawn with a genuine spirit of sympathy with their subjects, as even a gorgio must feel. — Riders of Many Lands, by Theodore Ayrault Dodge. (Harpers.) Especially from the Far East and from our own West Colonel Dodge has drawn the materials for his papers on horses and horsemen, yet there is hardly a portion of the world that is left quite untouched. Indeed, the extensiveness of the author’s knowledge of his subject is remarkable. The literary quality of the book, however, is not so enduring as to commend it permanently to readers not already curious in matters relating to the saddle. The pictures, mainly by Mr. Remington and from photographs, are capital. —In Harper’s Black and White Series is published Travels in America a Hundred Years Ago, being Notes and Reminiscences by Thomas Twining, an Englishman, who lived in India, and afterward traveled in this country, where he saw Washington, Volney, and other public men, as well as society in Baltimore and Philadelphia. The book is moderately interesting, for Mr. Twining was a moderately interesting man.
Decoration and Typography. The Birth and Development of Ornament, by F. Edward Hulme (Swan Sonneuschein & Co., London ; Macmillan, New York), is at once a valuable aid to the student of ornament and applied art, and a readable book for the amateur. It begins with a chapter on what ornament, in distinction from pictorial art, really is, carefully stating the principles, necessity, and utility of decoration, as well as the position of symbolism in ornament. Decoration and ornament are taken up historically, and followed with care and elaboration unusual in a volume comparatively so small. Stained glass, bookbinding, enameling, tattooing, metal work, illumination, and kindred subjects are touched upon. Many references to larger works are introduced, rendering the volume most useful as a textbook. — Printers’ Marks, a Chapter in the History of Typography, by W. Roberts, editor of The Bookworm. (George Bell & Sons, London.) The chief value of this book is in its liberal exemplification of printers’ marks, over two hundred examples being given. It is a pity that the editor did not avail himself of the effective papers on the subject which appeared in The Bookbuyer three years or so ago. He would have enriched one side of his subject by so doing.