Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Although he dwells longest on his favorite song writers (Schubert, Franz, Grieg, and MacDowell), others are not dwarfed by an overbalancing praise of these few. Indeed, it may be laid down as a general principle that in such books as this the legitimate use of comparison stops at illustration and characterization. As evidence that the author's opinions evince a thorough knowledge of the subject we have but to point to the masterly review of Schubert.

While there may be a few who will contend that the popular purpose for which the book is designed would have been better served by some modifications in the way of both elision and amplification, the volume can never be classed as a compendium of useless knowledge about insignificant composers and antiquated songs. Mr. Finck has treated his subject conscientiously and enthusiastically, from a practical standpoint, and his treatise is just what he intended it to be a sort of SongBaedeker, with bibliographic foot-notes for the benefit of students who wish to pursue the subject further.

To try what may be called the emotional analysis of music is to offer a direct and perilous challenge to ridicule and cynicism. In view of the inherent difficulties it may seem inappropriate, if not unwise, that Camille Bellaigue's volume, "Musical Studies and Sil"Musical Studies and Silhouettes," opens with lengthy chapters on Sociology in Music" and "Realism and Idealism in Music." The author's theory is that "to humanize sound" is the mission of music, and that it has ever been the effort of great musicians of nature to translate into melodies, rhythms, and chords the impression or the reaction of material things upon us.

66

This theory is logical. Was it not because Beethoven had felt and suffered all that there is in life to feel and suffer that he was able to strike chords more full of emotion and pathos than have ever been struck before or since? Both of the essays referred to evince a tireless study of the subjects, and are models of intelligent criticism; yet, after all, there is more unembellished truth spoken in Joubert's words: "The more nearly a note or chord, a melody, rhythm, or sonority, touches a human sentiment or a soul, the more nearly is it ideal, the more nearly is it real, and the more nearly does it attain to the perfection of beauty.

M. Bellaigue has shown himself to be one of the most erudite of investigators into the his

tory of music and, more particularly, into the annals of opera in France. In fact, he is most successful in his studies of the lyric drama, and what he remarks has the value of a keenly. felt personal impression. But the attitude of the worshipper, although sometimes serviceable, is not always the best for the critic; his uplifted eyes are too likely to see only the head of fine gold, and to neglect the less noble parts of baser material.

The chapters which furnish the most delightful reading are "Italian Music and the Last Two Operas of Verdi" and "Silhouettes of Musicians." Miss Orr deserves credit for her admirable translation; the style is clear and forcible, and, above all, she has the giftwhich few translators possess when the subject considered is music — of always putting the right adjective in the right place.

It has been pointed out that it would be a vast gain to the growth of taste, and to all forms of art among us, if the present ambition to write books on æsthetics might, in some greater measure, give place to more serious and modest study of nature and standard art, as a means of cultivation and for the sake of cultivation. In a volume entitled "For My Musical Friend," Mrs. Aubertine Woodward Moore (whom we used to know as "Auber Forestier ") has compiled a series of essays on music and music culture. Its purpose is to indicate how the rational methods applied today in other branches of learning may be brought to bear on the music lesson, how reckless waste of time and effort may be avoided, and how music may gain its rightful place as a beneficent influence in daily life.

Mrs. Moore properly expounds the theory that to appreciate music we must possess a definite and systematic knowledge of it as a foundation, and though she does not tell us so totidem verbis, the real object of her book is to spread the opinion that such a knowledge should form part of general education. It would be unnecessary to insist on the value of this if it were not widely assumed that æsthetic appreciation is a mere matter of taste. The chapters on "Rational Methods of Music Study," "The Technique That Endures,” and "How to Memorize Music," are alike readable and instructive. Her work is pervaded by an enthusiasm which gives a peculiar zest to the critical portions. The index of twenty pages, in addition to a table of contents, is almost superfluous. INGRAM A. PYLE.

[ocr errors]

RECENT BOOKS OF FICTION.*

[ocr errors]

Mr. Henry B. Fuller has a keen sense of the charm of the unexpected. He has essayed so many manners that we anticipate some sort of a surprise whenever a new book appears bearing his name. For a time he seemed to delight in the kind of realism that is dear to Mr. Howells, and his skilful handling of unpromising material elicited our somewhat unwilling admiration when "The Cliff Dwellers" and "With the Procession came to hand. But the creator of Pensieri-Vani and the Chatelaine was obviously a romanticist at heart — albeit of a fantastic and refined type so that we are not surprised to find in "The Last Refuge" a reversion to the romantic manner. The story opens entertainingly with the description of a certain Freiherr of middle age, who finds his capacity for aesthetic enjoyment waning, and who seeks a sort of vicarious rejuvenation in the companionship of a youth in whom enthusiasm is undimmed, and upon whom the primal impulses of life act with undiminished force.

To these two characters others are soon joined, each animated by a special idealism, and in search of the conditions under which it may be realized. For one reason or another, the fair island of Sicily appears to the imagination of all these people to be the spot of which all are in search to each of them individually it is a sort of "last refuge " in a hitherto baffled quest. To Sicily they all repair, and their paths converge to the same ducal estate, where they find themselves gathered together under the same roof, and where they indulge in artistic revels. We leave the reader to find out the nature of these diversions and the upshot of the somewhat singular relations that grow up between the characters concerned. It must suffice us here to emphasize the charm of Mr. Fuller's manner, and the fact that he has again (as in his first books) produced something that almost deserves the name of a new variety of literary composition. No one can hope to produce anything really new in literature at this late day and under the sophisticated conditions of

THE LAST REFUGE: A Sicilian Romance. By Henry B. Fuller. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

THE EAGLE'S HEART. By Hamlin Garland. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

THE PATHFINders of the REVOLUTION. By William E. Griffis. Boston: W. A. Wilde Co.

IN HOSTILE RED: A Romance of the Monmouth Campaign. By J. A. Altsheler. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.

WHO GOES THERE? The Story of a Spy in the Civil War. By B. K. Benson. New York: The Macmillan Co. CRITTENDEN: A Kentucky Story of Love and War. By John Fox, Jr. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RICHARD YEA-AND-NAY. By Maurice Hewlett. New York: The Macmillan Co.

THE GLORY AND SORROW OF NORWICH. By M. M. Blake. Boston: L. C. Page & Co.

KING STORK OF THE NETHERLANDS. By Albert Lee. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

GWYNETT OF THORNHAUGH: A Romance. By Frederic W. Hayes. New York: The F. M. Lupton Publishing Co.

modern art, but something approximating originality may be predicated of a book that combines suggestions of Sterne and Stevenson and Mr. Stockton. So peculiar a blend as this is not often met with, and we give it welcome as a relief from the innumerable story-books written upon conventional lines.

There could not well be a greater contrast than is offered by placing this book side by side with Mr. Hamlin Garland's latest novel. Mr. Garland, we know by this time, will not surprise us, whatever else he may do. In "The Eagle's Heart" he is the same plain blunt man that he was in "MainTravelled Roads," and has acquired little more of art than he had at the outset of his career. The sense of humor was left out of his composition, and of the finer graces of style his work has remained imperturbably innocent. But he has other qualities, qualities of earnestness and rugged force, that are impressive, and never made by him more impressive than in this straightforward story of the wild free life of the Western cattle ranges. The cowboy period of our Western civilization is fast becoming a matter of history, and Mr. Garland has done us a service in thus preserving its spirit in a form that may make it seem real and vivid to coming generations. There is even poetic feeling of a sombre sort in some of his descriptive pages, and a realization of the elemental and abiding forces in human character. Of characterization in the minuter sense in which the art of the novelist understands it there is little or nothing. The people of whom he writes are not convincing presences - the eagle-hearted hero possibly excepted- but rather lay figures decked out in such sentiments and attributes as the writer thinks appropriate to them. In a word, they are not viewed from within, but rather from the outside, and with somewhat unsympathetic vision.

Dr. William Elliot Griffis has written many excellent books of popular history, and is well-equipped for this work. But it is one thing to write a confessed history, and quite another to write a historical novel, and for the latter task Dr. Griffis does not seem to possess the necessary qualifications, if we may judge by his "Pathfinders of the Revolution." This book deals with Sullivan's expedition, made in 1779, into the country of the Six Nations, an expedition which broke the power of the Iroquois allies of the British, and proved an important factor in the eventual triumph of the Revolutionary cause. The matter of this book is of great interest, and Dr. Griffis has shown himself an accurate student of the subject. But his manner, from the point of view of the art of fiction, is not that of the successful story, and he is obviously out of his element in attempting to write one. A single illustration will suffice to make our meaning clear. A considerable part of the narrative is made up of letters from the actors to their friends at home, and Dr. Griffis thinks nothing of beginning a letter at the end of one chapter, and continuing it into the next. The composition must be sawn into equal lengths, no matter what the artistic effect.

Mr. Altsheler is one of the best of our novelists of American history, but he has done better work than may be found in the book entitled "In Hostile Red." The fact that this is an older and shorter story revamped into a full-sized novel probably accounts for its lack of proportion, and its extremely uneven quality. It is a story of the Monmouth Campaign and the operations in and about Philadelphia just before the retirement of Sir William Howe. The central situation is rather effective. Two young Continental officers, having captured two recently arrived Englishmen, are led by a reckless impulse to assume the clothes and the characters of their captives. Thus transformed, they make their way into Philadelphia, and live for some days hand in glove with the British officers. At the end they make a clean breast of the affair, and are sent back by Howe, who is satisfied that they are not spies in the ordinary sense. When they interview General Washington on their return, they do not get off so easily, and spend the following night under guard, with the pleasant anticipation of being shot at daybreak. Having had their scare, which is richly deserved, they are given their liberty. The love interest of the novel is supplied by the daughter of a Philadelphia merchant, a young woman who pretends to be a royalist, but is at heart a patriot, and, as such, more than once instrumental in helping the Continental forces to carry out their plans.

"Who Goes There?" by Mr. B. K. Benson, is the story of a spy in the serious sense, and the time is that of the earlier period of the Civil War. The hero is a young man who suffers occasional lapses of memory, which may last for months or years. One of these attacks comes upon him when he is within the Confederate lines, and, as a consequence, forgetting that he is a Union soldier, his recollections revert to the time of his boyhood, which had been passed at school in a Southern city. He fights for a time in the ranks of his newfound friends, when accident restores him to his Northern comrades and to the memories that had failed him. The psychological part of this study is rather clumsily managed as a whole, although it becomes effective when it deals with the mental struggles of the hero to reinstate the section of conscious memory which he dimly feels to be missing, but to which no clue seems obtainable. fighting part of the story is given up to a great deal of the minute detail of skirmishing, and of battleincidents as they appear to the individual participant; there are no broad effects, and there are no episodes of absorbing interest.

The

our list is the Here, at last,

The fourth American war story on "Crittenden" of Mr. John Fox, Jr. is a book written in the spirit of art not a great book, by any means, but a pleasant one, and displaying a talent for literature that sets it upon a far higher plane than any of the three previously mentioned. It is strictly up-to-date in its theme,

being concerned with the war in Cuba, and having the San Juan charge for its culminating episode. It takes the popular view of that war and its heroes, a view which the author evidently holds in all sincerity, but which is possible only when we shut our eyes to the mad passion which brought the war upon us, and to the sinister administrative influences that shaped its developments. If we knew nothing of these things, we should be carried away by the fine enthusiasm of the book, besides being captivated by its tender poetic sentiment. It is probably as wholesome a book as could be made out of the material offered by our unfortunate war with Spain.

It

"Richard Yea-and-Nay" is a work of fiction that seems in strange company when grouped with the artificial productions of current romance. is a book of flesh-and-blood, a book of marvellous insight into a vanished historical period, a book of creative imagination in a very high sense, a book which possesses such distinction of style as few modern writers have at their command. The judgment which has prompted so sound a critic as Mr. Frederic Harrison to single this book out as preeminent among all the writings of the past year is hardly to be disputed, and those who come under the spell of Mr. Hewlett's vivid pages must feel that they are in the presence of veritable genius. It is not too much to say that the figure of Cœurde-Lion is now made for the first time a real presence in the world of romantic reconstruction of the past, a saying ventured with all due reverence to the memory of Scott, and of such lesser story-tellers as have attempted to deal with this complex and fascinating personality. And what we may say of Richard may be said with almost equal truth concerning John and Henry the father of both, concerning the fair Jehane and Berengaria of Navarre, and Bertrand de Born, and a host of other personages. It was the troubadour just mentioned who fixed upon Richard the name that serves Mr. Hewlett as a title for his work, and the strange selfcontradictions exhibited by that masterful ruler are portrayed with a power that almost places this book in a class by itself. The archaic and incisive character of Mr. Hewlett's diction is in itself a triumph of art, and the art is one so difficult that it comes as a sort of shock to the reader of easy conventional romance. One thing is clear: this is no book to be skimmed, but one to be read word for word, and deeply pondered at that, if the reader wish to possess himself fully of its import.

Thin indeed, and hopelessly unreal, in comparison with Mr. Hewlett's extraordinary production, seems such a book as Mr. M. M. Blake's "The Glory and Sorrow of Norwich," which is yet a fair example of its class, and not so bad a romance after all. We would not make it suffer unduly by setting it in this unfair juxtaposition, and hasten to say that the generality of those who read historical fiction for their entertainment will be likely to find their satisfactory account in this tale of the days of

the third Edward, the French wars, and the Black Death.

Mr. Albert Lee, who wrote "The Key of the Holy House," has again taken a theme from the history of the Dutch uprising against the Spanish oppressor, and produced, in "King Stork of the Netherlands," a historical novel of more than usual interest and merit. King Stork is, of course, the Duke of Anjou, whom the great Prince trusted with such unfortunate consequences, and the story deals with Spanish intrigue, and the deeds of the familiars, and the exploits of the beggars, all deftly interwoven with the private romance which gives unity to the story. But we feel all the while that the real hero is William of Orange, and when that heroic leader at last becomes the victim of the assassin foiled so many times we care little for the outcome of the book as far as the other characters are concerned.

When we reviewed "A Kent Squire," by Mr. Frederic W. Hayes, a few months ago, we complained that the romance had been hurried to a conclusion without resolving half of the perplexities in which the plot had become involved. It seems that our judgment was over-hasty, for the author never really meant to leave us thus unsatisfied, as is now evidenced by his "Gwynett of Thornhaugh." This romance takes up the threads that were dropped in the earlier volume, and proves a worthy successor to that fascinating production. Its period is the year or two following the death of the Roi Soleil, and it deals, among other material, with the Jacobite rising of 1715, the last impotent efforts of Marlborough to turn traitor, and the whole web of intrigue that characterized the early years of the Regency. The scene is mostly in France, and the adventures of Ambrose Gwynett are quite as surprising as "A Kent Squire" would naturally lead us to expect. The Regent himself, however, is the most interesting figure of all, and is presented to us in a more favorable light than history would seem to warrant. The suggestion may seem farfetched, but we have been more than once reminded by him of the use which Mr. Sienkiewicz makes of the figure of Petronius in "Quo Vadis." That is, he says most of the good things, and is the most attractive of the characters presented. It has seemed to us fair to say that this novel, taken together with its predecessor, comes nearer than almost any other English product has done to reproducing the characteristic charm of the romances of Alexandre Dumas. There is the same brilliancy of invention, the same intimate familiarity with the public and private life of the period concerned, and, we regret to add, the same readiness to resort to illegitimate sensational devices. Mr. Hayes had no need of endowing his hero with quasi-miraculous powers; he would have been interesting enough without them. As for the episode of the messe noire, we can only say that the grewsome picture offered is only in part atoned for by the striking manner of the presentation. WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE.

American expansion, and

BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.

Two historical works intended for popular reading and instruction have American leaders. been written by Mr. Edwin Erle Sparks, associate professor of history in the University of Chicago. One of these is given the timely name of "The Expansion of the American People, Social and Territorial" (Scott, Foresman & Co.), and is a dispassionate account of the extension of the English-speaking people over the North American continent, a preliminary chapter or two introducing the more specific questions relating to the United States. In the modern manner, Dr. Sparks refrains for the most part from philosophizing. What philosophy is to be gained from the book is hardly that peculiar form of pessimism which has been masquerading recently under the phrase, "the higher morality," but it is of the sort which will give comfort to the advocates of that persuasion. In the later chapters of his book, those dealing with the recent assumptions by the American Government of the policies of Europe, Dr. Sparks sees only obedience to laws which have, throughout history, governed the conduct and decay of nations. Judging the future by the past, he even prophesies the retention of Cuba as a part of the territory under the American flag, with other dependencies to be governed in the European manner, while the United States lays off her garment of national righteousness for the uniform of the soldier and the acceptance of the title "world power" in the continental sense. "We cannot escape it," writes the historian, "because we have no desire to escape it." The other book from this same hand is styled "The Men Who Made the Nation" (Macmillan), and is a history in the more usual sense. The name given the book is slightly misleading. The various chapters bear each the name of the leading American of one specific period. It is natural to think each chapter, therefore, an essay upon the individual whose name it bears. Rather is the work a homogeneous whole, beginning with the voyages of Benjamin Franklin to England as the agent of the American colonies and ending with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the name at the head of each chapter serving as a means of identifying the precise era. The numerous illustrations in both volumes are appropriate and interesting.

The closing years of the 19th century.

During the years from 1891 to 1897 Mrs. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer gave to the public six ample volumes on the history of the different nations of Europe during the nineteenth century. The volumes were reviewed at length in our columns, and a favorable judgment was pronounced upon them as being of much interest and usefulness to the general reading public. public. Mrs. Latimer makes no pretensions to historical research and disclaims technical training. But through a long life she has mingled in the best social circles of Europe, and has thus been able to

tell the story of Europe during the century largely from the inside, and with the grace that comes from such social experience. She has now issued a volume made up of supplements to these books, with the title "The Last Years of the Nineteenth Century" (McClurg). From the nature of her task the author has not been able to invest these brief supplements with the charm of the original chatty volumes. They have been compiled from newspapers and magazines, and from the notebooks of Richard Harding Davis, G. W. Steevens, and others, thus lacking freshness as well as the personal element. The volume is, however, of value for reference where the facts are undisputed, and some parts of it are full of interest for the story they tell, especially the account of Lord Kitchener's Soudan campaign. There is quite a complete narrative of the Boer war. Altogether, the book is a valuable one, and we are glad Mrs. Latimer has added it to her series.

Sketches of two Presidents.

Two more of the compact, pleasant little" Beacon Biographies" (Small, Maynard & Co.) are at hand, one dealing with Thomas Jefferson, from the pen of the Hon. Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia, and the other with Ulysses S. Grant, written by Mr. Owen Wister. Mr. Watson writes a readable book, but from the outset seems burdened with the thought that his space will not avail for a proper treatment of his subject. He avoids controversy, and in doing so fails also to present Jefferson as the greatest original political philosopher this country has ever produced. "I have no space," Mr. Watson remarks in his preface, "for his speculative opinions, for his political theories, for his daring suggestions in science, mechanical arts, education, and state socialism." The collectivists have been saying that if Jefferson were alive to-day he would be of their number. Mr. Watson here goes further, and his own views being well known, it seems a pity that he could not have hinted somewhere what it is in the great individualist's writings that gives support to "state socialism." There seems to be a certain lack of sympathy throughout the narrative. But the intention to be wholly fair and impartial is also manifest, and nothing before the people to-day contains so much worth reading in as little room, so far as Jefferson is concerned. To devotees of the leader of the Northern armies, General Grant, Mr. Wister's book will doubtless seem lacking in sympathy as well. To lovers of mankind it will be a treasure, and the biographer has done an honest and a daring thing in telling the truth. He gives the real reason why Grant left the army before the war, and shows him as he was in Galena in 1860, a man without a future and on the downward grade in fortune. From that to the presidency, where fortune did not smile upon him, traversing in the meantime the heights of military glory, and subsequently receiving the homage of the world in his extended tour, thence to his pitiful failure as a

leech and warrior.

financier and his partial triumph over death in completing his wonderful memoirs, Grant's career is eminently human, and can gain nothing by concealment of the obvious facts. Both of the small volumes are carefully printed and bound, characteristic portraits of their subjects serving as frontispieces. To that interesting series of biograThomas Sydenham, phies known as "Masters of Medicine" (Longmans), Dr. Joseph Frank Payne now adds the life of Thomas Sydenham. Dr. Payne prepared the article in the Dictionary of National Biography on this eminent seventeenth century leech and warrior, and the present volume is an expansion of that article, much more in detail and adding many documents complete from which insight into the life of the physician and his times can be gained. The times, indeed, were interesting, and few did more to make them so than the Sydenhams. They were frankly on the side of the Parliament, and Thomas left Oxford before graduation in order to take part in the border warfare then waging in his native county of Dorset. Later the field of revolt broadened and the exertions of the Sydenhams with it. Of this family, five brothers served on the independent side, Colonel William, Major Francis, Major John, and Captain Richard, the latter in a civil capacity, ranging themselves with Thomas Sydenham, who himself gained the

rank of captain, a fact which Dr. Payne has been among the first to bring to the world's attention. With this goes the further fact of service in the second war, after a time spent in the rehabilitation of Oxford. The wars over, the trooper went to his study of medicine in Montpellier, and thence to London, where he accumulated an excellent practice and, in good part, prepared those treatises on disease which have gained him the world's esteem. The book is in every way a worthy one.

Manners and customs of old London.

In his recent volume, "London Memories" (Lippincott), Mr. Charles W. Heckethorn is not quite so happy as in his preceding book noticed last year in these columns, "London Souvenirs." It is, perhaps, as full of valuable information not easily accessible elsewhere, and it has the distinct advantage of a good index; but the subject matter has not so much living interest, since it is less a transcript of life, and houses and bridges and priories figure in it more than men and women. Some of the chapters are, "Horrors of Old London Executions," "Old London Hermitages," "London's Immortal Animals," and "Wells and Springs in Old London," titles sufficiently suggestive of the character of the book. Mr. Heckethorn has collected a great deal of matter of curious interest and presents it pleasantly, although perhaps at times his style has too much the air of colloquial carelessness. For the student of manners and customs it will be of real value, and the general reader will find in it much to surprise him as well as much to give him occasion for reflection, so great

« AnteriorContinuar »