Comment on New Books

FICTION.

His Honour, and a Lady, by Mrs. Everard Cotes [Sara Jeannette Duncan]. (Appletons.) Mrs. Cotes’s later books amply prove her right to be counted among the successful delineators of Anglo-Indian life. In this, in some ways, her most ambitious tale, the local color is reproduced with admirable vividness; the story is well told, and, we need hardly say, is eminently readable from beginning to end. It lacks, however, the agreeable spontaneity of some of the writer’s earlier and even inferior work ; the too persistent cleverness occasionally degenerates into mere smartness, and there is an evident striving after subtlety of expression and characterization, which naturally results in giving a flavor of artificiality to certain well-conceived situations, while it blurs the presentments of more than one of the persons of the drama. The brightness and sanity of the book make these shortcomings the more regrettable. — Summer in Arcady, a Tale of Nature, by James Lane Allen. (Macmillan. ) Mr. Allen has written a story which stands to him as a serious study of a young man and a young woman who are the subjects and almost the victims of nature in the most critical period of their lives. He shows them under the power of a restraint which saves them from making shipwreck, and brings them to the form of a runaway marriage. The tale, after all is said, impresses us as a sort of tour de force. The thing can be done. Now let Mr. Allen cease thinking about it. All sorts of morals can be drawn from it, as he points out in his somewhat belligerent preface ; but a work of art commands the artist, and we fear Mr. Allen has been too little under the imperious control of his story. — A Hypocritical Romance, and Other Stories, by Caroline Ticknor. (Joseph Knight Co., Boston.) A dozen stories marked by an agreeable gayety which is a somewhat uncommon element in such volumes. One has usually to choose between the dismal and the hilarious. Miss Ticknor always has a story to tell ; it turns upon some slight incident, and has two or three windings ; there is little excitement, but there is cheerfulness, a natural manner, and an unforced pleasantry. — The Babe, B. A., by Edward F. Benson. (Putnams.) The writing of tales of undergraduate life is like the acting of Juliet,—so long as one is young enough to look the part, one is not old enough to feel it; and the young graduate telling of his college days is generally not young enough for his juniors nor old enough for his seniors. Mr. Benson’s book has a very light blue cover, and is adorned with pictures which bring Cambridge vividly back to one’s mind ; but his story is slenderness itself, and the young men, as perhaps indeed they should, would pass for collegians of our land. One notes with satisfaction the reverent and sincere little chapter on a service at King’s College Chapel, written in a manner not unfitting for an archbisliop’s son. — Jersey Street and Jersey Lane, Urban and Suburban Sketches, by H. C. Bunner. (Scribners.) Mr. Bunner has seldom been more engaging than in these little sketches. The unity of the book must be granted by courtesy, since one or two of the sketches, such as The Story of a Path, are purely pastoral, and others, notably The Lost Child, are rather conspicuously lacking in local color. The best are those which deal with the old New York of the author’s boyhood. The volume is generously illustrated. — Doctor Cougalton’s Legacy, a Chronicle of North Country By-Ways, by Henry Johnston. (Scribners.) This book has the effect of being in its original intention a series of papers on the humors of a Scottish village. Whether the connecting story was an afterthought or no, artistically the volume would have been better without it ; for the tale, notwithstanding the absurdity of the doctor’s will, is conventional to the last degree. But there are insight and humor in the character-studies, and our presumption is rather strengthened by the fact that the central figure of the most noticeable chapter in the volume has nothing whatever to do with the story. Indeed, to our sorrow, Saunders M’Phee, the schoolmaster of Kilbaan, practically makes but a single appearance, though the brief record of his secret generosity is, in its humor and underlying pathos, the best sketch that we have happened to conic across in very recent Scottish fiction.

LITERATURE.

The Book-Hunter in London, Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting, by W. Roberts. (McClurg.) Some records of the history of the London bibliophile and his haunts, and of those who minister to his passion ; a work suggested, we suppose, by M. Octave Uzanne’s entertaining volume devoted to the quais and their habitués. Mr. Roberts walks rather heavily after the light-footed Parisian, but the Londoner’s book is much more voluminous than his fellow worker’s, is conscientiously painstaking, and, in the main, accurate. (We are sure that it is by a slip of the pen that Pepys’s library is placed in an Oxford college.) The volume, indeed, contains an immense deal of interesting information, as well as a liberal supply of anecdotes and gossip anent its subject, all set forth in a rambling fashion, which after all has a method in it, while there is a sufficiently full index to guide readers; for it is a book to dip into rather than to read continuously. The work is brought out in an attractive style, and is very fully illustrated ; the illustrations sharing the discursiveness of the text, but being often well selected and apposite. — Prose Fancies, Second Series, by Richard Le Gallienne. (H. S. Stone & Co., Chicago.) This is a pretty book, inside and out. The fancies are slight, indeed, mere gossamer drift, but there is infinite grace in the way they lend themselves to the capricious breeze. Mr. Le Gallienne is a rare man, for he can talk of himself acceptably. There is nothing but gossip and gay chatter in the book, personalities so intimate as to give less sophisticated men pause, but the author carries them off with a winning youthfulness that conquers us like laughter. Behind the exuberant nonsense and the airy sentimentalizing we feel real penetration and real tenderness. — The Greater Victorian Poets, by Hugh Walker, A. M., of St. David’s College, Lampeter. (Macmillan.) This book has little pretension to brilliancy, but it can be relied on as a conscientious and scholarly account of the poetic development and inter-influence of the three writers with whom it deals, Browning, Tennyson, and Arnold. It is fortunately free from vitiation by a desire on the part of the essayist to support a preconceived thesis. — The Epic of the Fall of Man, a Comparative Study of Cæduion, Dante, and Milton, by S. Humphreys Gurteen, M. A., LL. D. (Putnams.) Mr. Gurteen’s previous study of the Arthurian epic will procure him a hearing for his new volume. It would seem that a comparative study of three poems so utterly different in aim and achievement could result in no very fruitful conclusions, but by confining himself to Cædmon and Milton, using Dante only by way of illustration, the author has succeeded in making an interesting book. Its value is much enhanced by excellent facsimiles of illustrations from early manuscripts,

POETRY.

The Tale of Balen, by Algernon Charles Swinburne. (Scribners.) Mr. Swinburne’s new poem, the only considerable work in verse which he has published for a number of years, brings with it the old breath of brave words, the old sonorous fall of musical period, and, alas, the old indirectness of motive and dilution of thought. The form of the poem, a heavily rhymed, nineline stanza, is singularly ill fitted for the loose, rapid narrative of the Morte d’Arthur legend which Swinburne follows, and the four consecutive rhymes with which each stanza opens are, in the mass, unbearably cloying. Then, too, the magical incantation of phrase, the lovely circumlocution which held us spellbound in the early work of the poet, seem a little withered and reminiscential now. But when all is said, there is so much beauty in the slow pulsing of the rhythm, in the rich flowering diction, and in the quiet drifting of the old chivalric story that one cannot put down the book without being thankful that the poet has kept so well the gifts of his youth. — England’s Darling, by Alfred Austin. (Macmillan.) The poet laureate takes upon himself the celebration of an English hero, Alfred the Great, whom, in a careful prose preface, he shows to have been neglected by English singers. One might wish that he had refrained from Comparing him, to Arthur’s disadvantage, with the hero of the Idylls of the King, of whom he says, “ The tactful genius of an exquisite poet has abstained from enduing him with more than a limited number of somewhat negative virtues;” for truly this Alfred to whom we are introduced is colorless to a degree of which even Swinburne would not have accused King Arthur. He speaks by the page, and in a manner often worthy of Calverley’s Schoolmaster Abroad with his Son. And as a play the poem strikes one as so far from dramatic as to turn the reader back with sad seriousness to a quotation from King Alfred himself which the laureate makes in his preface: “ Do not blame me; for every man must say what he says, and do what he does, according to his ability.” One is the more thankful, therefore, for the last pages of the volume, devoted to The Passing of Merlin, Mr. Austin’s true-hearted and frequently felicitous lament for the death of Tennyson.

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

William Henry Seward, by T. K. Lothrop. (Houghton.) A new volume of the American Statesmen Series. Like other numbers of the series it is almost as much an historical as a biographical study, and as such covers the rise of the anti-slavery movement in politics, the war for the Union, and the reconstruction period. Mr. Lothrop is severely impartial and dispassionate in his treatment of Seward ; indeed, the personal element in the book is subordinated to the official in a manner which tends still further to make the study one of the times in which the figure of Seward is a conspicuous but not a commanding one. The judicial tone increases one’s confidence in the fairness of the narrative, which is well proportioned, and flows on with a steady regard for what is really significant. — Memoirs of an Artist, an Autobiography, by Charles François Gounod, Rendered into English by Annette E. Crocker. (Rand, McNally & Co.) Whether, as there is some reason to think, Gounod brought down his memoirs to a much more recent period, and then destroyed a portion of them, not caring to keep a record of certain unpleasant episodes in his later life, or whether, like many another autobiographer, he stopped with his work half done, all readers will regret the premature ending of a history which does not lose its charm even in translation. But in one respect, at least, the Memoirs have a certain completeness, for they are above everything a tribute to a mother who deserved all the devotion her son lavished upon her memory and the whole inspiring story of her self-sacrificing life is told here. The recollections end with the first production of Faust, in 1859, and the abruptness of the close shows the writer’s intention to continue them further. It is to be hoped that at no distant day the composer’s letters may extend and supplement the autobiographical fragment. — Frances Mary Buss, and her Work for Education, by Annie E. Ridley. (Longmans.) A life written by a friend for friends, is the author’s description of this memoir, but we think that many who have known little or nothing of its subject or her work will be glad to learn of both from this book. It is an excellent record of the rise, progress, and triumph — for Miss Buss, happier than many reformers, lived to see her dreams come true — of the revolution which has taken place in the whole system of education of middle-class girls in England during the last generation. This revolution, Miss Buss, who turned her own very popular and profitable private school into a public one (public in the English, and not American sense of the term), was very largely instrumental in bringing about. Fortunate were the parents who could place their daughters in the charge of the head of the North London Collegiate School for Girls, for her influence over her pupils can be compared only to Dr. Arnold’s ; indeed, such a comparison constantly suggests itself to the reader. But though this wise teacher was the bravest of pioneers, she had the good Englishwoman’s innate conservatism, and if one quality distinguished her more than another, it was her womanliness. Of few women of our time can it be said with more fullness of meaning, “ Her works do follow her.”

NATURE AND TRAVEL.

A Cathedral Pilgrimage, by Julia C. R. Dorr. ( Macmillan.) A companion volume in matter and make-up to the author’s charming little collection of English travelsketches published last year. To that rather large company of American tourists who bring with them some capacity for appreciation, but only slight knowledge, as they wander from one cathedral town to another, this book should prove a veritable boon ; for it is readable enough to interest the careless, touches salient historical points, and may arouse a desire to know something of history in stone. All through it the reader has the agreeable personal companionship of a true cathedral-lover, and one of the most enthusiastic and good tempered of travelers. Mrs. Dorr often speaks, and speaks justly, of the kindness and courtesy which met her in these storied places ; but it is not alone the hosts who are to be praised, when the guest is always well pleased. — The Evolution of Bird-Song, with Observations on the Influence of Heredity and Imitation, by Charles A. Witchell. (Macmillan.) Mr. Witchell proves himself a careful and accurate observer, and he gives us a most painstaking analysis of his notes on the bird-songs of Great Britain. He adopts Darwin’s theory as to the origin of voice among animals in involuntary contraction of the muscles, and he traces its growth through the cries of combat and alarm, the call-notes, and the simple songs, up to the complex efforts of the more ambitious songsters. His work is evidently entirely original, and his quotations from other authors are only to support his theories. It is, perhaps, a little unfortunate that he had not availed himself of all the literature of his subject. Mr. E. P. Bicknell’s valuable papers in The Auk, for instance, seem to have escaped his attention. Mr. Bicknell there discussed the cause of second song periods, a branch of the subject to which Mr. Witchell makes only a passing allusion. Some of Mr. Witchell’s minor deductions seem to be based oil imperfect evidence, as when he explains the nocturnal singing of the nightingale by its habit of migrating at night, ignoring the fact that a large proportion of day-singing birds have the same custom of nocturnal migration ; but the argument as a whole seems to be unassailable, and the evidence of voluntary imitation is as convincing as it is surprising. As to American birds the author’s experience is very limited, and the authorities from whom he quotes in regard to them are the older ornithologists exclusively, so that a few errors are, perforce, to be found in these passages. There is so much really interesting matter in the book that the critic is the more sorry to have to admit that in spite of all it is undeniably dull. — Parts XIV. and XV. of Nehrling’s North American Birds (George Brumder, Milwaukee) give excellent biographies of divers blackbirds, meadowlarks, orioles, crows, jays, and larks. It is a pity that the plates are not quite on a par with the text ; but we must not expect too much for our money, and at least Professor Ridgway’s picture of the Dickcissel is as spirited as one could wish.