The Rise and Fall of the French Romantic Drama, by F. W. M. Draper. London: Constable, 1923. 158.

[New Statesman]

RARELY has there been so much ado about nothing as in the case of the French romantic drama, which, with the possible exception of some half-a-dozen pieces, is to-day as dead as a doornail. The fact that out of the turmoil came forth Stendhal's Racine et Shakespeare is perhaps the most interesting feature of the movement; but then, as Mr. Draper truly remarks, Stendhal was not a genuine romantic. The influence of Sir Walter Scott was all-pervasive and it was bad Sir Walter at that. The romantics certainly made the devil of a noise about Shakespeare, but they never understood him at all, and he had much more in common with Racine than with them.

It needs a brilliant pen to make the subject interesting to-day, and though Mr. Draper has commendable industry and seems familiar with the plot of every bad vaudeville and melodrama that held the stage during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, he has not sufficient art to make the dry bones live. The following passage is not an unfair sample of his style:

'A typical associate of Hugo's youthful years is Alexandre Soumet. Soumet was fourteen years older than Hugo. Louis XVIII had a great liking for his poetry. He wrote Saül and Les Macchables. In 1814 he had reproached Mme. de Staël for timidity in literary affairs. But in 1827 he was nearly forty and was too old to practise his own liberal dramatic opinions. His Elisabeth de France (1828) was not very successful. Jeanne d'Arc was not played till 1844,' and so on. In truth Mr. Draper has not many illusions about the literature with which he has to deal. Perhaps a little enthusiasm, even if wrongheaded, would have made his book more easy to read, but he admits frankly that the romantic drama was after all a damp squib. For this state of affairs he gives several reasons -the hostility of general society, the unwillingness of the actors to learn a new style of acting, the costly décor due to the desire for local color and historical accuracy in the mounting of medieval and other costume plays, and, what is perhaps most close to the matter, the rise of Rachel and the consequent discovery of the French public that after all they liked Corneille and Racine best. Our sympathies are with the French public, and also with Mr. Draper for the intense labor he has had to bestow on a task which he has evidently not found congenial.

Off the Map, by Alex. Devine. London: Chapman and Hall, 1923. 1s.

[Esmé Wingfield Stratford in the Beacon]

WE are beginning to realize what sort of triumph of nationality has been engendered by the Peace of Versailles, and how the old Liberal idea of national self-government has, like most of the obvious old nineteenth-century nostrums, been found to prove absolutely unworkable in practice. The vanguard of Balkan liberty was furnished by the unconquerable people of the Black Mountain, over whom the Turk was never able to effect more than the shadow of a conquest, but whom the freeing of Serbia has at last brought under the yoke - though not, perhaps, for very long. It is a terrible story of intrigue and Naboth's vineyard that is related no doubt from a biased point of view-in these pages. Not the least poignant feature is the tragedy of the aged and patriarchal king, Nicholas.

The Reed of Pan, by A. C. Benson. London: John Murray, 1922. 78. 6d.

Little Poems from the Greek: Second Series, by Walter Leaf. London: Grant Richards, 1922. 58.

[Westminster Gazette]

THESE two versions of Poems from the Greek Anthology - Mr. Benson covers more or less the whole long range, while Mr. Leaf in this, his second series, confines himself to the later periods - may instructively be considered together, representing, as they do, two different theories of translation. Mr. Benson, it is true, claims that his poems are something more than translations. 'Paraphrases,' we gather, is the term he would choose to describe them. Indeed, he explicitly states that 'his aim in translating is to give a series of equivalents which should be, essentially and unmistakably, so far as I could achieve it, English Poems.' We will not quarrel with the inexactitude of the language here, or press the point of 'equivalents,' as Mr. Benson's general meaning is fairly clear; and later he speaks of Mr. Leaf's Little Poems (he is no doubt referring to the first series) as 'versions rather than paraphrases,' and adds that 'their very fidelity to the exact phrasing of the originals, ingenious and apt as it is, does not permit Mr. Leaf to Anglicize the poems completely, or to free them from the slight constraint which comes from rendering language rather than thought, and mode of expression rather than motive.'

We do not understand Mr. Benson to be depreciating Mr. Leaf's efforts here; rather, to

be explaining the difference of their aims. But his language is not wholly felicitous. It might be answered that Mr. Leaf does, as a matter of fact, render both thought and language, and does not-how is it possible?-neglect the motive in his care for the mode. And it might further be urged that Mr. Leaf's delightful little versions are also poems, although it is true that they retain a rich flavor of the original, and could not possibly be taken for anything but translations from the Anthology. And it would be unfair to Mr. Leaf to refrain from reminding Mr. Benson that Mr. Leaf has set himself a task which is infinitely harder than his own. It is comparatively easy to make an English poem out of a Greek poem- by English poem we understand Mr. Benson to mean a poem which would come home to English readers who had no knowledge of the Greek language or of Greek thought and sentiment if you may introduce thoughts and feelings of your own and omit some of the poet's. It is more difficult if you must confine yourself to the thought and feeling of the original. Now this is what Mr. Leaf has done, and he has, in our judgment, while escaping the slavery of the letter, produced what will generally be recognized as poems.

Maurice Barrès und die geistigen Grundlagen des französischen Nationalismus (Maurice Barrès and the Spiritual Foundation of French Nationalism), by E.-R. Grund Curtius. Bonn: F. Cohen.

Rheingenius und ‘Génie du Rhin,' by E. Bertram. Bonn: F. Cohen.

[L'Europe Nouvelle]

It was inevitable that the theories and propaganda of M. Barrès should stir up replies in Germany. The task was the less difficult because one could easily discern in the theories of the French academician the influence of German national theories of the nineteenth century. M. Curtius, who, far from being a foe of France, has endeavored to spread French books in Germany, cannot refrain from putting his compatriots on their guard against what he calls 'the nationalismus of a Barrès.' He does his work with calm, with precision, convinced that he is thus contributing to hold in check the evil elements that prevent an understanding between the two neighbor nations.

M. Bertram may seem not quite so sure of himself, though he asserts that he is pursuing a similar purpose. He enters into specific denials of

the assertions made by M. Barrès in his Génie du Rhin, and seeks to open the eyes of the Germans in order that they may oppose any separation of the left bank of the Rhine.

The Wedgewood Medallion, by E. B. C. Jones. London: Chatto and Windus, 1922. 73. 6d.

[Morning Post]

THE late Miss Louisa May Alcott would be shocked, we fear, by the work of her latest disciple. All the same, The Wedgwood Medallion is obviously just a slice out of a modern history of the March Family. Those objects of our youthful adoration have now changed their name to Rendel, and live in a romantic cottage sufficiently near to Tintagel. Mrs. Rendel is, of course, a wise and sympathetic mother, after the more modern conceptions of these days, and her children call her Fia. Barbara, Sophy, Ursula, and Sheila are our old friends, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy come to life again, with slightly different views of female deportment, it is true.

The episode portrayed in The Wedgwood Medallion is the love affair of Sophy-Jo.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi: A Critical Study, by A. K. Hind. London: Cotswold Gallery, 1923. £3 38.

[Sunday Times]

ANYTHING Mr. Arthur Hind may have to say about etching or engraving is always worth reading, and he has a congenial subject in the work of the greatest architectural etcher of the eighteenth century. His text, however, is only one of the attractions of this handsome quarto, which contains 146 illustrations of Piranesi's work, including the complete series of his Vedute di Roma, and of this famous set in some cases two states are illustrated. This book, which so delightfully increases our knowledge of perhaps the greatest master of architectural etching, should be in every well-organized art library.

BOOKS MENTIONED

Kronprinz Rudolf, Politische Briefe an einen Freund, 1882-1889. Vienna, Leipzig, and Munich: Rilola Verlag, 1923.

NIELSEN, AAGE DRARUP. Durch die Tropen zum Südpolarmeer. London, Berlin, and Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1923.

IT

T is in a passage of that plaintively melancholy strain which marks George Moore when he is happiest that he sentimentalizes about the past. 'Out of date,' he writes. 'What a pathos there is in the words - out of date! Suranné, as the French say. How are we to render it in English? By the beautiful but artificial word "yester-year"? Yester-year perhaps, for a sorrow clings about it; it conveys a sense of autumn, of the "long decline of the roses." And so the writer perhaps confesses himself 'suranné' when he ventures to suggest books as gifts for the sweet girl graduate or the blushing bride.

Approaching perilously close to forty and separated from the younger generation by twenty most significant years, he is uneasily conscious that possibly a cleverly contrived little chest of Murads or an ingeniously designed vanity case equipped with that paraphernalia calculated to indefinitely delay 'the decline of the roses' might prove more acceptable.

Let us take a high moral ground in this matter, however, lest we find ourselves weakly acquiescing in that revolt which has made maidens their mothers' mentors and sons their sires' seniors. Anyway they ought to welcome books - undoubtedly most of them do and we can, of course, exert discretion in the selection of titles.

Although the polished precision of Macauley's periods may repel them and Gibbon seem unduly deliberate, both sexes will respond to the colorful pages of Wells' 'Outline,' while the piquant revelations of Strachey and Gamaliel Bradford will feed them history in pleasant pellets. Let us be frank and confess that the engaging fiction which passed for biography in our day seems sadly insipid in the light of latter day developments of the art. As for poetry, one need not necessarily agree with the

iconoclastic Doctor Upnor in 'Ursula Trent' with his 'Poetry is only a superstition: a sort of degraded music. Everything that has been said in poetry can be said in prose more easily and completely' in order

to admit with Clement Shorter that for every page of true poetry in the Victorians' volumes there are twenty of mere rhetoric. The rising gen

'It is books which teach eration is less tolerant in

us to refine our pleas- its judgments and is in

ures when young.

-Leigh Hunt. clined probably to take its poetry in anthologies. That they are writing their own poetry in a quite different idiom will not blind the more discerning to the beauty of the pure gold that was minted in an earlier age. Of necessity, however, they will feel closer to their own spokesmen and will respond more genuinely to them.

Kipling, Stevenson and Hardy represent the genesis of the novel to too many of these young people. And some affect to find themselves more attuned to Fielding than to Thackeray, Scott, Dickens, Meredith or Jane Austen. But it is the novel of their own period which appeals to them. Nor can it be denied that this form has advanced technically during the past two generations. 'Pride and Prejudice' with its leisurely tempo can hardly be expected to successfully cope with an age which prides itself upon its 'pep' and is prejudiced only against Puritanism.

THE

Youth is perennially receptive: is eager for the vicarious experience to be gained from reading. Let us sow the field while it is fertile. Give them the literature of their own time: cull the titles from the publishers' announcements in a magazine like the Atlantic. To aid you in purchasing we have supplied bookshops selling such volumes with the reproduced insignia.