Comment on New Books

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

Richelieu, by Richard Lodge, M. A., Foreign Statesmen Series. (Macmillan.) The average quality of the numerous historical series published in the last few years has been, all things considered, rather surprisingly good ; but no one of them, perhaps, shows such uniformly admirable work as the Twelve English Statesmen, so that readers will be ready to give an especial welcome to a new series on similar lines, devoted to some of the most eminent statesmen of Continental Europe, of which this volume is the earliest issue. Precedence can well be given to the life of the man whom his biographer justly styles the greatest political genius France has ever produced, while Professor Lodge’s masterly treatment of his subject makes his monograph no ill model for its successors. It is perfectly proportioned ; the narrative, if condensed, is neither dry nor bald ; it is luminous and straightforward, even when dealing with the tortuous diplomacy, the confusing Wars and rumors of war of the time ; it is steadily interesting, and often suggestive. It will be the reader’s own fault if he does not gain from the book a definite conception of the deep and enduring impress left by Richelieu on his country, and also of the momentousness of the principal shortcoming of his policy, his failure to reform the financial mal-administration of France. The second volume of the series, Philip Augustus, by William Hoklen Hutton, B. D., though not so noteworthy a book, is a well-arranged, clearly-written, and, we may add, readable brief history of Philip the Conqueror. The author very modestly owns his indebtedness to the French and German historians who have studied his subject in the last fifty years, his conclusions drawn from an examination of the original authorities being generally anticipated by those scholars, so that he has had no choice but to follow in their footsteps. A later edition will probably correct a few slips in names and dates, evidences of careless proof-reading. — Eliza Pinckney, by Harriott Horry Ravenel. (Scribners.) This is the third volume in the series of Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times ; and if those bands of women known today as “ Dames ” and “ Daughters ” are as plentiful as the reports of their doings, we may well believe that the book-counters are lined with purchasers waiting for just such books as these. What is more, they are good books. This last volume presents a capital picture of the best Southern life before and during the Revolution. Fortunately for the biographer, Mrs. Pinckney left a mass of letters such as no woman to-day could find time to write. They are letters that picture clearly not only the social life of the time, but the strong and womanly personality of their writer. It is interesting, also, to observe bow many names that figure in them are names of constant and honored recurrence in American history. —Jeanne d’Arc, Her Life and Death, by Mrs. Oliphant. Heroes of the Nations Series. (Putnams.) That Mrs. Oliphant writes of the Maid with sympathetic insight and fervent enthusiasm we need hardly say, or that she expends no efforts in trying to give naturalistic explanations of the mystical elements in the history. She is not disturbed by the apparition of the saints : “ there is in them an ineffable appropriateness and fitness, against which the imagination, at least, has not a word to say.” She finds it more incredible that the devout peasant girl should have shown the genius of a soldier ; while at her trial she appears “ a far greater miracle in her simplicity and noble steadfastness ” than even in the wonders she had wrought. Mrs. Oliphant attempts nothing more than to retell, faithfully and vividly, thie familiar story, for which, considering the distance in time, such astonishingly abundant and authentic materials exist. We know of no popular life of her heroine which would be so likely to attract young readers. Like all the books of this series, the volume is generously illustrated.— The Mogul Emperors of Hindustan, A. D. 1398-1707, by Edward S. Holden, LL. D. (Scribners.) A collection of miniatures of the Mogul Emperors having come into Professor Holden’s hands, he was led to devote the spare hours of a long and harassing winter ” to the study of their history ; the result being certain magazine articles, here reprinted in a revised and extended form. Remembering that history is the author’s recreation, and not his serious pursuit, we find in these sketches of the Great Moguls which come to us from the Lick Observatory many commendable qualities. Much varied information is brought together and systematized in a volume of moderate compass ; excellent judgment is shown in the selection of illustrative extracts from the authorities used, and in the choice of the authorities as well, while the writer’s conclusions drawn therefrom are temperate and just, and set forth in a lucid, unaffected style. The work is well illustrated, some of the portraits being reproduced for the first time. But surely the miniature of the Empress “ buried in the Taj-Mahal,” which makes so attractive a frontispiece, and that of NurMahal (page 128), represent the same woman. Perhaps, however, the face of the latter, assuming the genuineness of the portrait, became the conventional model to which supposed pictures of later queens conformed. —The Education of Children at Rome, by George Clarke (Macmillan), presents succinctly the educational theories which dominated the Roman school system, and deals practically with such matters as the kinds of schools founded by the Romans, their equipment and their curricula. There are many larger works on this subject, but none which form more pleasant reading. —The Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six, edited by Arthur Gilman. (The Riverside Press, Cambridge.) The further title of this handsome octavo is, A Picture of the City and its Industries Fifty Years after its Incorporation. Here is a city with a population of over eighty thousand, and a valuation of over eighty million, which indicates in its memorial volume the relative value it sets on ideas and on things. Three fourths of the work is taken up with historical studies by John Fiske and A. McF, Davis, sketches of life by T. W. Higginson and others, notes on Harvard University by President Eliot, John Trowbridge, Bishop Lawrence, Dr. Sargent, and others, and further inquiry into those features of the city which have to do with the health, education, religion, philanthropy, and self-government of the citizens ; while only the last quarter of the book is devoted to the business of the city.

This is putting the horse before the cart, and on prudential grounds alone is the most admirable advertisement the city could have. After all, people really wish to know a good place to live in, not merely a place to make money in. — Quaint Nantucket, by William Root Bliss. (Houghton.) Mr. Bliss has been singularly fortunate in the amount of material at his command, lfis narrative is used merely to link together delightful clippings from old letters, records, and sea-logs, unspoiled by any deviation from their original spelling and phraseology. There is no attempt at a systematic history of what Mr. Bliss justly styles “ Quaint Nantucket,” but the quotations from documents of successive epochs give us pictures which we would not willingly exchange for photographs from the life. Separated from the mainland by a broad sound, the island folk kept their types more pure than their brethren on the continent. The history of their civilization is like a scientific experiment. Possible causes of change are introduced singly, and their relations to consequent effects are curiously evident. — The Messrs. Putnams have fitly incorporated in the Heroes of the Nations Series their illustrated edition of Irving’s Life of Columbus, as condensed by the author from his larger work.

LITERATURE.

Mr. Knight’s definitive edition of the Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (Macmillan) has reached the sixth volume, and in the chronological order embraces those poems written and published between 1814 and 1820. Thus the final group is Memorials of a Tour on the Continent. Nothing is lacking which the reader may think he requires for the correct knowledge of all the circumstances under which Wordsworth wrote ; nothing, either, which he may need for a comparison of texts ; and hardly anything is lacking which a tolerably ignorant person would require for the elucidation of the facts imbedded in the verse.— Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, English, French, and German Translations, comparatively arranged in Accordance with the Text of Edward Fitzgerald’s Version, with further Selections, Notes, Biographies, and other matter. Collected and edited by Nathan Haskell Dole. (Joseph Knight Co.) As comprehensive as this title are the two teeming volumes of Mr. Dole’s Variorum Edition of Omar. All we know, and all we need to know of the Persian poet, is to be found somewhere in one of the two books. Nothing is omitted, from the ripe fruits of German scholarship down to the green apples of “ occasional verse.” If Mr. Dole’s diligence and ingenuity had been employed as judiciously in arranging this mass of material as in collecting it, nothing but enthusiasm could greet his performance. As it is, he has rendered lovers of the tent-maker a great service in bringing together all that has been said of him and done with him. It is merely with the matter of arrangement that fault might not unreasonably be found. For a single example, Fitzgerald’s notes on the Rubáiyát of his translation do not appear in any one easily accessible place. They all seem to be there, but one must use one’s own ingenuity in finding them. The books are handsomely made, without and within, and, for their wealth of contents, should certainly meet with a generous welcome. — The Lesser Bourgeoisie (Les Petits Bourgeois), belonging to Scenes from Parisian Life, and the last published of its author’s novels, has appeared in Messrs. Roberts’ edition of Balzac, translated by Miss Wormoley. This book was not given to the public till 1854, three years after Balzac’s death, though it would seem it was nearly ready for the press ten years earlier. It has been surmised that M. Rahou gave the finishing touches to the work. — Mr. Hamilton Wright Mabie has added to the list of his published works a volume of Essays on Nature and Culture. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) The essays are of firm intellectual fibre and wholesome tone; if they have a fault, it is that of a rather unrelieved didacticism and an occasional tendency to emphatic truism. — Mr. William Cranston Lawton has done a service to all teachers and students of the classics by issuing in book form his lectures on Art and Humanity in Homer. (Macmillan.) Intelligently used, this little book will go far toward making the school study of Iloiner humane and profitable. — The Works of Max Beerbohm. (Scribners.) Seven brief essays from the Omnia Opera of Mr. Beerbohm ; and, alas, the final words of his book are these : “ I shall write no more. Already I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the Beardsley period. Younger men, with mouths of activity before them, with fresher schemes and notions, with newer enthusiasm, have pressed forward since then. Cedo junioribus. Indeed, I stand aside with no regret. For to be outmoded is to be a classic, if one has written well. I have acceded to the hierarchy of good scribes, and rather like my niche.” To express delight in such a passage, by one who tells us that in 1890 he was a freshman at Oxford, would be to confess one’s self incapable of enjoying it. With discretion, too, must one read the essay of historical research upon the year 1880, and be thankful for such training as one has already received in the spirit of decadence.—Matthew Arnold’s review of Stopford Brooke’s Primer of English Literature and his Essay on G ray, and John Morley’s address to the University Extension students on the Study’ of Literature, form a group of papers in a small volume designed apparently to quicken zeal in the study of literature. (Macmillan.)—The Interpretation of Literature, by W, H. Crawshaw, A. M. (Macmillan.) The merits and faults of this little treatise, which is a “ discussion of literary principles and their application,” are such as usually’ attach to work which has taken form in the classroom : on the one hand, perfect clearness and sanity ; on the other, over-elaboration of plan, ami a formalism of tone which is inharmonious with the essay idea.

PERIODICALS.

A periodical is generally founded for one of two purposes, — the making of money or the expression of ideas. After it is well on its feet, it may accomplish both of these ends. We have before us recent volumes of The Yellow Book, The Evergreen, and The Chap-Book. The purpose of The Yellow Book (Lane, London ; Copeland & Day, Boston) has sometimes been considered a puzzle. Its continuance upon the lines on which it was first framed appears to have been abandoned. Its yellow is as bright without, but far paler within. The cult of which it was originally the prophet is expressing itself far more quietly, at least here, and The Yellow Book is correspondingly less exciting, both to Philistine enemies and to initiated admirers. The Evergreen, a Northern Seasonal (Patrick Geddes and Colleagues, Edinburgh ; J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia), tells its own aim so clearly in the Prefatory Note to the volumes that have come to us that uncertainty is banished under the name which Allan Ramsay chose for his kindred attempt in 1724. The Evergreen seeks “ to stimulate the return to local and national tradition and living nature.” To this end it brings together the work of Scottish writers and illustrators in volumes of striking beauty of type, paper, and binding. In the summer volume, essays, fiction, poetry, and decoration are all chosen with the spirit of summer as a guide ; in the autumn volume, the same note of the season is consistently struck. One may not care for all the art, of pen and pencil, which the books set forth, — indeed, one does not in many instances ; yet the “seasonal” has something of sincerity about it which smacks of its northern air, and the knowledge that its publishers, living together in a sort of college settlement, make their periodical but a part of a general attempt to develop whatsoever things are lovely in Edinburgh leaves one wishing well to this enterprise, which can hardly have financial gain as one of its motives. S. R. Crockett, William Sharp, Sir Noël Raton, and others equally well known are among the contributors. Each number contains pages of French, — not so much, we fancy, for the reason that leads Cosmopolis to the same course, as to emphasize the historic sympathy between France and Scotland. From these foreign growths we turn to Volume IV. of our own little Chap-Book. (H. S, Stone & Co., Chicago.) Like life itself, it stands compact of error and truth, wisdom and folly. The notes are nearly always readable and pointed, the illustrations are often decadently bizarre and poor, the verse is amazingly unequal, the criticism is frequently capital. A paper by Mr. Norman Hapgood, An Intellectual Parvenu, is especially good. One class of modern Americans, indeed, could hardly be better occupied than in thinking over Mr. Hapgood’s remarks ; and for publishers of new magazines, whether in Chicago or in Britain, there is much virtue in the wise words with which Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie brings his contribution to the Cliap-Book to an end : “The new impulse in literature, when it comes, will evidence its presence neither by indecency nor by eccentricity, but by a certain noble simplicity, by the sanity upon which a great authority ultimately rests, by the clearness of its insight and the depth of its sympathy with that deeper life of humanity, in which arc the springs of originality and productiveness.”

FICTION.

Weir of Hermiston, an Unfinished Romance, by Robert Louis Stevenson. (Scribners.) A Romance Begun would be a more truthful description of this charming fragment, for the word “unfinished” carries with it an impression that the end was not far off. Putting together what Stevenson finished and what the Editorial Note tells us was to have been done, we may safely calculate that about two thirds of the story was still to be written when its untimely end came. There is abundantly enough to convince us that Stevenson had begun one of his very best performances ; and there is enough to show clearly, again, why it is that our generation, especially its younger element, cares so very greatly for the writer who is gone. No one spoke more unmistakably than he the most characteristic language of our day. His mind, like his pen, worked in the medium which it provides ; and one great sorrow is that nobody is left so completely the interpreter of a spirit which now must be content with a less satisfying utterance. — Disturbing Elements, by Mrs. Birchenough [M. E. Bradley]. (Macmillan.) A pleasing and readable tale, whose unobtrusive virtues will cause it to be overlooked, we hope, only by the hardened readers of the highly colored, strongly flavored fiction of the hour. The contrasting characters of the charming, well-bred, clever, and sophisticated Mrs. Lanion, one of those women who instinctively prefer the other sex to their own, and her high-minded, college-trained, and quite unsophisticated granddaughter, are drawn with admirable truth, as is the household of the French branch of their family, and especially the old lady who is its efficient and domineering head. The author’s good sense and good taste are grateful to the reader, who soon finds that she can tell a story as well. —The Massacre of the Innocents, and Other Tales, by Belgian Writers, translated by Edith Wingate Rinder. (Stone & Kimball.) A dozen tales by some Writeis of to-day, of whom only one has a European reputation, selected by the translator as lepresentative of “ the contemporary Belgian Renascence.” Two of the sketches, The Massacre of the Innocents, by Maeterlinck, and The Denial of St. Peter, by Demolder, are Scripture stories with a Flemish setting, — literary versions, as it were, of old Dutch Biblical pictures. Three of the tales are by M. Georges Eekhoud, sometimes called the Zola of Flanders, a name to which the brutal realism of Hiep - Hioup, rather than the tenderness and pathos of Ex-Voto, would entitle him. Realism, so called, is the prevailing quality of these studies, grimly tragic for the most part. Judging from this book, we should conclude that the Belgian fin de siècle raconteurs are quite without the grace of humor. We are told that The Beleaguered City may help us to comprehend L’Ame Errante, but we fail to discover, in manner or spirit, the least affinity between M. Richelle’s fantasy and Mrs. Oliphant’s beautiful tale. — Lives that came to Nothing, by Garrett Leigh. Iris Series. (Dent, London ; Macmillan, New York.) In this vague tale, or rather sketch, we meet the characters, to whom we are never really introduced, at a seaside resort, where they indulge in much epigrammatic and allusive talk, the conversations being varied by fragments of letters. As we go on, we become slightly acquainted with the several characters, and begin to comprehend how unfortunately the love of some of them has gone astray, especially that of “the little woman,” who, like Charlotte, is a married lady, and whose Werther is also a moral man. The hook is a singular mixture of cleverness and crudeness, and, to all appearance, is a youthful production. — In the Valley of Tophet, by Henry W. Nevinson. (Holt.) The Valley of Tophet is a typical mining district in England, of the worser sort, and the dramatis personæ of the dozen stories composing the volume arc drawn from the overworked and underfed workers of the iron mines. As befits the stage and actors, the trend of the book is pathetic. The author, evidently familiar with the models from which the characters are drawn, but influenced by a laudable desire to champion their cause, has idealized his portraits, and demands a little more pity than we care to bestow on persons not made like as we are. At times, however, all trace of overdrawing disappears, and we involuntarily yield the sympathy no longer asked. Such stories as An Undesired Victory and Miss Rachel show Mr. Nevinson at his best, and his best is admirable.