intelligent and appreciative, is due to no inspiration or design of their own, the Mæcenas and Horace comparison becomes absurd. A more fairly parallel case would be the editorials in almost any newspaper, for which one man's name appears as responsible, and of which he is nominally author, though he may get them written by proxy of whomsoever he will, provided only he is willing to stand by them; or the last Webster, "thoroughly revised and greatly enlarged and improved by Chauncey A. Goodrich, D. D., and Noah Porter, D. D., LL. D.," when every one knows that the revising was done by these gentlemen in very large part by proxy. Where no secret is made of the proxy, no moral blame can attach to the transaction, a common enough one in all lines of literary work that require only industry and judgment. But from a literary point of view, it is doubtless true that one cannot thus expand the quantity of his work except at the expense of its quality. Herbert Spencer availed himself largely of proxy work in collecting and arranging the materials to be used in the sociological department of his great series; but when it comes to the actual writing out of the book, it is not conceivable that any hand but his would be allowed to touch the page.

The House of a Merchant Prince.1 MR. BISHOP's new novel, to our mind, shows a decided advance in ability, not merely of handling, but of conception. So entirely unexciting, so without intensity, is all Mr. Bishop's work, that the average reader is likely to fail in appreciating the unemphatic excellences thereof. For one thing, his use of the English language is good, clear, unaffected, and easy to read. This is a rarer merit than the uncritical realize. As an ordinary thing, the reviewer in saying that a book is written in good English and especially a novel-means only that it is not written in very bad English, neither conspicuously gushing, stilted, awkward, or obscure. This negative sort of excellence seems to be included in the "patent process for the English machinenovel," and appears as regularly as the weekly installments of the never-failing stream of English reprints in our periodicals. American novelists have never been able to catch the trick of the machinenovel, and continue to do something better or worse: as a general thing, it is in the matter of style worse; it becomes a cause for congratulation when the American novelist produces a book that is even negatively good in style. Our best novelists are undoubtedly to be found in the serial writers of our leading magazines; but how few of these, whatever their excellence of matter, set it forth in language that never trips up the reader and diverts his attention annoyingly from the thing said to the saying of it; how few move in their garment of language as

1 The House of a Merchant Prince. By William Henry Bishop. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1883.

easily and unconsciously as if it were their skin, never stumbling over it, or getting it twisted round their knees, to the visible alteration of their gait, or pulling uneasily at it to keep it in graceful folds.

Mr. Bishop has acquired this difficult purity of style, and it is an excellence that would carry off writing far inferior to his. It has evidently been to a great extent the standard of selection for the "Atlantic Monthly"; and while that magazine may perhaps have carried too far its rigor on this point, and rejected substance for form, there is still much to be said in favor of making a pure style the sine qua non. We remember a critical gentleman, not greatly given to the reading of stories, who read with pleasure one of the thinnest serials the "Atlantic” ever published, avowing that its good English was so grateful to his ear, lacerated by other more weighty serials then current, that he read it in preference to them. And observe that the same good taste that shapes sentences, selects words, and arranges paragraphs gratefully to the correct ear, will guide the larger matters of style-the due choice not merely of how to say things, but of what things to say, and what not, and thus, in incident, in conversations, in the general putting together of the story, insures good work; and all this may be independent of any real ability outside of style—any ingenuity of plan, originality of thought, vigor of feeling, truthfulness of character-drawing.

When, therefore, we add to Mr. Bishop's excellent handling the several virtues quietly inherent in the stories, we are giving him a position only second among American novelists to the three who will (always excepting two or three books of Mrs. Stowe's) probably be admitted to monopolize our front rank-Hawthorne, Howells, and James. Moreover, The House of a Merchant Prince is a book that leaves the way open for indefinite improvement on the part of the author. It may turn out yet that while he lingers in the region of the mild and uneventful, he is merely getting his muscles and weapons well in hand for campaigns into that of profounder human experience. Or if Mr. Bishop preserves the every-day tone by deliberate preference, he is hardly the less true to life. In one sense he is truer, for life is a pretty every-day thing, after all; and if even anxious love and disappointed lifeambitions are presented to our minds with a pleasant serenity, he is following life truthfully enough as it appears to all of us--from an outside point of view. It is true that great work, however objective, must make human experience seem vital to the reader, more or less as in the actual experiencing. But no great work can fill the particular place that the sort of writing in question fills-this realistic reproduction of the every-day phases of life, or of unusual phases from an every-day point of view.

The House of a Merchant Prince has all the virtues of this every-day sort of realism. Its people are real. Ottilie is as fair a specimen as one need

want of the most likable sort of American girls; Bainbridge of the most likable sort of American young men. Presumably, the picture of New York fashionable and business life is true, and true picturing of the social and business life of our country is the thing that is much more needed just now for the right development of American fiction than effective writing. Observation, comprehension, reproduction -that is the line in which our novelists should be working now.

We are giving thus much consideration to the novel under review, not so much for any intrinsic importance as because it is the best illustration that has come under our eye of this hopeful and healthful method in fiction-the best, largely for the very reason that it has in it no phenomenal or inimitable ability, and therefore holds the more encouragement for the younger writer. For the rest, besides its good style, its refined realism, its definite, unexaggerated character-drawing, there is a pleasant narrative flow, that, though occasionally verging perilously near dullness, never quite reaches it, and often goes far from it; and a more complete rounding out and significance than in the author's previous work. In avoiding the sensational he has hitherto left the reader with a feeling that there really was not enough to the story to have called for the telling of it; the present book is almost completely free from

that defect.

Poems from the Harvard Advocate.

In connection with the Berkeley poems, noticed in our issue of January last, it is not without interest to speak of another book of college verse, somewhat less recent-a collection made from one of the college journals of Harvard, covering a space of some ten years. A comparative study of the verse of different colleges would cast a good deal of light on the obscure questions, What are the conditions for the evolution of the poetic gift? and, What is the next generation going to do for poets? In the comparison of these two colleges, which may very fairly represent extremes of East and West, the most conspicuous difference at once impresses the reader: the Harvard volume shows a very great facility in society and humorous verse, while its serious verse is, in general, motiveless, characterless, and conventional; the Berkeley volume is all but destitute of light or humorous elements, while almost all its serious verse has the air of genuine impulse. The immediate reason is not far to seek; a favorite theme for the

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Harvard verse has been love of the most inexperienced and superficial sort-the variety, in fact, known as spooney"; while the range of subjects covered by the Berkeley collection is chiefly intellectual. The years of college life are those in which the most legitimate emotions are intellectual enthusiasms, aspirations, and the like "stirring of the blood." It is a phenomenal man who can experience or versify love of much dignity before he is twenty-two

years old; but the years of American college life coincide, at least in part, with the period of the very greatest fertility in what one may paradoxically call intellectual emotion-a period that Tennyson has retrospectively characterized in well-known stanzas of "Locksley Hall" and "The Two Voices." That portion of the Harvard verse that lies within the intellectual range of subjects is dignified, genuine, and some of it poetic; but it would not have as much variety nor originality as the Berkeley verse of the same character, were it not for the poems of a single man, G. E. Woodberry, '77, who alone, in either book, impresses one as sure to have the making of a poet in him. The real excellence of the book, however, is its light verse, and to this F. W. Loring, '70, and J. C. Goodwin, '73, contribute almost all that is first-rate-besides some very fair serious verse.

The Harvard verse is more careful in

mechanical work-rhyme, meter, and a certain educated use of the language-than the Berkeley verse; and, oddly enough, more old-fashioned and prolix. There is much echo of Holmes, and more of Longfellow; but that was only to be expected.

Amicis's Military Life in Italy.1

A STRANGER to the writings of De Amicis is impressed from the first page with the thought that here is a writer with eyes that see everything, and with a pen facile in setting down the results of his watchings. His pictures are photographs, and the only fault in them is that the tone is not soft enough, so that the details are presented too plainly at the expense of the whole picture. Growing more accustomed to the style, this feeling wears off somewhat, and as the reader is brought into sympathy with the emotional Italian character tempered by the restraint of military discipline, he finds increased delight in following De Amicis as he tells of the varied scenes of the march, the bivouac, the barrack, the cafe, the battle, the rounds, the guard-house, the carnival, the garrison, the scout, the hospital, the farewell, and sketches is the story of Carmela. the welcome home. The most ambitious of the An officer sent to command the detachment garrisoning a small island finds a girl crazed at her desertion by one of his predecessors, and, touched by her beauty, spends his three months of service in the almost hopeless He succeeds finally, attempt to restore her reason. by presenting vividly before her a fac-simile of the departure of the faithless lover, and, it is needless to say, carries her away with him as his wife. This is character painting. The mental state of Carmela the skeleton of a story that contains much good herself, childlike, ruined, and yet with "virtue in her blood," the alternation of hope and despair in the young officer, and his growing love for the unfortunate girl, and the stupid, snuffy atmosphere of 1 Military Life in Italy. Sketches by Edmondo de Amicis, army officer. Translated by Wilhelmina W. Cady. Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1882. Sold in San Francisco by A. L. Bancroft & Co.

the insular Italian town are all well presented. The mother, to whom the book is dedicated, may well be proud of the tribute, with its evidences of love and veneration on almost every page.

Oddities in Southern Life and Character.1 HUMORISTS, as a rule, indulge only in short literary flights. Long-drawn funniness is fairly certain to be strained. The paragraphs that amuse when taken singly are apt to fall flat when gathered between covers. Mr. Watterson has happily avoided this danger, by intermingling through his compilation much that is serious in the way of description of life, manners, and customs in the South.

away.

Most of the sketches were written years ago, and exhibit phases of society that happily have passed The characters are for the most part drawn from the rough and illiterate classes, and at times-as in the prize fight described in the second article-the narration becomes almost sickening in its coarseness and brutality. But aside from this, the book overflows with rollicking, careless, jovial humor. Uncle Remus needs no sponsor in this connection; and Bill Arp, George W. Harris, "Sut Lovingood," and Joseph G. Baldwin are equally well known. The wit is keen and incisive, and sometimes verges on broadness. But behind the fun is always an underlying vein of human nature, and sometimes of earnest sentiment and opinion. Something characteristic has evidently been the editor's aim, and he has Imade a fair success. The opening sketches are long, but the latter portion of the book is remarkably scrappy, dwindling down to paragraphs of perhaps a dozen lines. Taken all in all, it is a pleasant, readable book, and will find a ready welcome among thousands who like a laugh in their leisure hours.

Miscellaneous.

THE History of the Negro Race in America2 is perhaps a more interesting than important contribution to American history. This is not saying that it is not full of important matter, much of it well written, temperate and generous in tone. But it falls far short of being scholarly, and the friendliest reader will praise the book as a remarkably good one considering that its author is of the colored race. It would, of course, be more gratifying to the friends of the race to have this history take so high a rank on its own merits, that the fact of its authorship would not be needed to bespeak a more friendly reception from the reading public. As it is, it is plainly not the last word on the subject, but rather a clearing of the ground for the future historian. Passing over the eleven chapters of thoroughly worthless

1 Oddities in Southern Life and Character. Edited by Henry Watterson. With Illustrations. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1883. For sale in San Francisco by Billings, Harbourne & Co.

2 History of the Negro Race in America, from 1619 to 1880. By George W. Williams. Vol. I., 1619 to 1800; Vol. II., 1800 to 1880. G. P. Putman's Sons. 1883. For sale by A. L. Bancroft & Co.

ethnography, and of rambling accounts of the present status of the negro in Africa, the facts all seem to be carefully sifted and treated with legal fairness. There is evident a certain desire to believe the worst in all cases of doubt with regard to the treatment of the negro, the sincerity of his friends, and so on; but it is rather remarkable that one of this race should not show more bias than that he should show thus much. Volume I. covers the period from 1619 to 1800; Volume II. from 1800 to 1880. The author was the first colored member of the Ohio legislature, and judge advocate of the Grand Army of the Republic, Ohio.—The second series of William M. Hunt's Talks on Arts has been recently issued. Nothing could be more pleasing than the style in which these Talks on Art are published, and whoever is the deviser of this very satisfactory piece of book-making deserves hardly less credit in his line than the appreciative compiler in hers. Paper, types, and covers are by no means too inanimate a medium to express the book-maker's intelligent appreciation of the author.Another appreciative work of the same publishers is a beautiful edition of Hawthorne, to be complete in twelve volumes. TwiceTold Tales, and Mosses from an Old Manse,1 are the opening issues of the edition. Nothing could be more perfect in typography and make-up, and each volume contains a fine etching from some one of the leading American artists. Henry George's Progress and Poverty is issued as No. 52 of "Lovell's Cheap Library "-a series of cheap reprints that certainly justifies its claim of having so far done the best, in convenience of shape and excellence of print, that can be done for ten and twenty -Mr. Tuckerman's History of English Prose Fiction shows a good style, a critical judgment, and sufficient knowledge and love of his subject to have produced a book both pleasing and valuable. He has, moreover, an unerring taste in the matter of quoting

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that adds much to the charm of his work. If there be a point on which we are disposed to cavil, it is the division of space that allots two hundred and seventy-three pages to the earlier periods, and only fifty-four to the fiction of the nineteenth century. With Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, Rolfe's edition of Shakspere's plays ends,

8 W. M. Hunt's Talks on Art. Second Series. ton, Mifflin & Co. Boston: HoughCompiled by Helen M. Knowlton.

4 Twice-Told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1883. For sale by Billings, Harbourne & Co.

6 Progress and Poverty. By Henry George. New York: John W. Lovell Company.

6 A History of English Prose Fiction from Sir Thomas Malory to George Eliot. By Bayard Tuckerman. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. For sale by Billings, Harbourne & Co.

7 Shakespeare's History of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The Two Noble Kinsmen, written by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Edited by William J. Rolfe. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1883.

In

though he will probably add the poems to his series. "Titus Andronicus" he passes over entirely, "because I believe that Shakespeare had little if anything to do with it." As to "Pericles" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," he takes the ground of Furnivall and Fleay, that they are not the result of collaboration, but of the filling out by a later hand of unfinished fragments left by Shakspere. "Pericles" he divides the Shaksperian part from the rest with great precision, but avows himself unable to distinguish with confidence between Shakspere and Fletcher in the other. Neither of the two is edited, like the former ones, with reference to school use. -The seventeenth edition of Haydn's Dictionary of Dates1 comes down to the autumn of 1881, and has been Americanized by George Cary Eggleston to a certain extent; that is, without omitting any English dates, a few of the most important American ones have been added, and errors with regard to America have been corrected. The last English edition of this work was in 1878, yet forty-eight pages have been added in this seventeenth edition, even without the American revision.- -Mr. Lanman, in Leading Men of Japan,2 gives brief biographical sketches of sixty of the most important characters in the recent history of Japan. To these is appended the

article contributed by the author to Johnson's Encyclopedia on the history of Japan, with several additional chapters. The whole makes an interesting book, rather of the encyclopedia character in its limited line.—Prof. Lounsbury is the author of the volume on James Fenimore Coopers in the American Men of Letters series. The fact that there has never been any previous biography of Cooper, as well as the unquestionably important place he held in the history of American letters, makes this volume a welcome addition to the series. However little Cooper's permanent fame as an author may justify his place in the list, no one should underestimate the significance of his influence in forming the literary habit in America.Among recent pamphlets received, are the Third Annual Report of the Jackson Street Free Kindergarten, which emphasizes the claim on beneficence of this good work (dependent on contributions) among the poor and neglected children; the Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1883, from Thomas G. Thrum, Honolulu, a compendium of valuable economic and other statistics, not without pages of literary interest; the Report of the State Geological Survey; and The Attractions and Repulsions of Small Floating Bodies, by Dr. John LeConte.

ANY one used to going below the surface of things finds food for anything but complacency in his estimate of human nature from the disclosures men inevitably make of themselves. We have a right to call ourselves an intelligent people, and, in distinction from the tribes of Unyamyembe, or the churls of the twelfth century, an enlightened one. Our silver dessert services are confessedly of better design than those of our fathers, our wall papers are attractive, our women know pretty well what becomes them best in dress, a taste for the lighter accomplishments is generally diffused, and most people are fond of books when they can borrow them or get them for nothing. Push the inquiry as to our advancement farther in the direction of moral sensibility and a nice sense of the rights of others, and indications too often crop out which prompt the inquiry whether we are so far ahead of the lake-dwellers of the stone age, and the villages embalmed under the peat bogs, as we are fond of supposing. A shrewd advocate wants no better evidence in a case than that his opponent will give against himself; and a whole year of argument would not have the force of some ex1 Leading Men of Japan. By Charles Lanman. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co.

2 Haydn's Dictionary of Dates. 17th edition. By Benjamin Vincent. Revised for American Readers.

pressions dropped in course of those discussions going on between English authors and American publishers within the last three months.

This matter of authors' rights is not one of limited interest, as some persons think, and proper merely to the small body of writers, whose estates do not make any perceptible returns in the income lists. Reading in some shape has become as much a necessity to all civilized nations as food and clothes. Let the daily paper, the weekly journal, the monthly magazine, the cheap railway novel, the handbooks of art and artisans, be struck from existence, and the world would find-and be surprised to find-how much of its light and comfort it owed to the ten thousand of men and women on the face of the globe who make writing a profession, in shape of book and newspaper work. The disproportion between their services and the return for them would strike the business man as it has never done before. The demand of enlightened Congressmen who finger the international copyright intermittently, and of others who might be expected to know more, that authors should write for the good of mankind, without further pay than will keep their New York: Harper & Brothers. 1883.

3 James Fenimore Cooper. By Thomas R. Lounsbury. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1883.

families off the parish, with no right in their own property, or protection for such pay as they do receive, would bring its advocates the signal credit it deserves. Considering the smallness of their numbers, authors exert more influence in this world than any other profession. Like all men who have done the best work of the world, most of them write from force of natural bent and insight, and with conscience of taste. They are authors by such necessity as made Nelson and Cochrane sailors and admirals, or Michael Angelo sculptor, Da Vinci and Titian artists, or Stephenson and Watt inventors. They work as the best clerks and book-keepers work, faithfully and keenly, from a motive over and above the rate of pay they get. In the case of the naval officer, the shrewd salesman, the clever workman, this faithfulness, this conscience is held by their employers worth all honor and encouragement. Let us see how it is with the author whose eloquence stimulates the spirit of the young officer, whose painstaking explanation makes the great invention possible to the brooding machinist.

The question of international copyright has come up in case of an English author who feels that he should receive payment for the publication of his book in America. Thousands have read his novels and been delighted with them, and their sale has put a pretty profit into the pockets of the firm who issued them here. Were it a new pattern of hinge, a new groove in a sewing-machine needle, or a new figure in carpet-printing, the author could demand and receive royalty for its reproduction in America, and the whole government force of both countries, if need be, would protect his rights. Why? The invention may not be worth more than sixpence, yet his right to his work is sacred and unquestioned. Nobody hears of English manufacturers taking the pattern of American stoves without redress by the pattern maker. The right of the author to the name and profits of his work into which he puts vitality and effort of a costlier kind than goes to mere hand-work, or to most invention, is so indisputable that it is acknowledged by publishers on both sides the Atlantic. The force of this obligation is so far felt that it has forced partial return from publishers in the shape of checks to foreign authors for reprints of their works. Everybody will admit that it is a very strong, plain claim which draws thousands of dollars from the pockets of publishers, in recognition of rights which could not be legally enforced. Pure decency has wrung this from them. Still, when an author is indiscreet enough to think that because he has a right in morals and common business honor to his profits he can ask for them, what is the reasoning which meets him?

The "London Athenæum," which inclines to treat the subject fairly, gravely reminds him that "it was purely a matter of favor, and at a certain risk to themselves, that the Messrs. Blank made arrangements with him; and when an American publisher

makes any payment for an English book, it is simply a gift on his part"; and remarks further, that " our correspondents labor under the delusion that the benefits of United States copyright can be secured in a roundabout fashion," that is, by depending on the honor of reputable firms with whom they deal. Would an Englishman, who had arranged with an American firm to sell a new sort of needle, unpatented in consequence of defective laws, like to be told it was purely a matter of favor that the firm undertook to sell his needles? Wouldn't he say, "This is bosh. If a firm takes a risk, it is because they are shrewd enough to see a pretty good chance of making money by it, and the greater the risk the higher the profit must be which tempts them." Would any merchants of standing like to remind such a consignee, or thank any one to remind him for them, that what they might pay him was a gift in any sense? True, his claim might not be collectable in law, but the code of merchantile honesty would bind them stringently enough to make him safe in dealing with them, if they had any standing to lose; either they would sell his needles for him, and account for every penny of profit to him, or they would refuse to sell them at all. It is a simple matter of common honesty, and yet gentlemen of education and posi tion can quibble and discuss it, and gravely remind their contributors they must take what they can get for their books-not their needles-across the water, and be grateful for it. A keener moral perception would keep many editors from "giving away" their own case in this fashion-to use the phrase whose aptness raises it out of the ranks of slang.

And

Again: the gentleman complains of the hardship that he has not received due profits from his republished book, whereupon the firm indicated conduct their defense by showing that they have paid A, B, C, and D such and such sums for their reprints, varying from fifty to five thousand dollars. correspondents promptly recall that Messrs. Blank have paid them very handsome sums they never expected in the present state of copyright law, and have contributed largely to subscription lists for other authors. What has this to do with the matter? Were the claim in a court of law, submitted to trained and discriminating brains, it would not do the Messrs. Blank a particle of good to prove that they paid A, B, C, and D, or signed subscription lists, as long as they had not dealt fairly with E, and F. What if they have sent the Dean of St. Asaph their check for £700 for profits on his book, which they reprinted without asking leave; or paid Miss Marabout £500 after pirating her society novels for fifteen years; or given Heavysides $11,000 for his "Fulminations on the Prophecies "-while they deny some writer all copyright on his serial, when it appears as a book; or print a clever story without the author's name as stipulated, "to keep him in the background"; or, having a difference with an author, promptly shelve his books for three or four years,