MEN, WOMEN, AND MINXES.* THE pleasure we feel in welcoming
this book is of necessity mixed with sorrow. Reading these delightful mays, so full of gaiety, of keen perception, of curious knowledge unaffectedly shown, it is impossible not to trace in them the influence so lately lost to literature as a whole. That they were inspired, approved and enjoyed by one of the first of critics ought to be passport enough, even outside their own great merits, to general admiration.
The subjects of the eighteen essays, touched upon in the too short prefatory note, are very various. As to dates, they ange through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, hardly touching the twentieth except in such matters of common interest as "Other People's Friends," "Pitfalls for Collectors," or "Art in Country Inns and Lodging- houses." Here the author shows a happy talent for putting into words the thoughta that occur to most persons of any real education, and with her never-failing, much-to-be- prized sense of proportion she suggests—almost without intention, perhaps—that hideousness, bad as it is, is not the worst of sins, that wax flowers, painted china, wool mats, blue rep chairs, gaudy carpets, and all the other horrors need not actually make life impossible. "As long as the lamps neither smoke nor smell, and the carpets and curtains keep out the cold, the wise lodger will possess his soul in silence and in patience." And, after all, "Art" is sweeping it all away and replacing it with something which may easily be worse, because it seriously affects being beautiful. Amusing questions, which send us back with a certain regret to the plain, unpretentious days of our grandmothers.
In her essays on the historical, literary, and society figures of past days Mrs. Andrew Lang has always something new to say and says it delightfully. Mme. de Genlis—in whom, though she is not pointed out as such, we seem to see a fine example of the Minx as well as of the poseuse—Mrs. Sherwood and the Fairchild Family, Lady Louisa Stuart, Miss Grant of Rothiemurchus—each of these means a window opened on herself and her surroundings, through which we catch glimpses of worlds which seem quite fresh through some magical treatment, however familiar with them we may have believed ourselves to be. It will be surprising, for instance, if the reprinted essay on the last-named lady, with its inimitable account of the way in which Mr. Grant brought up his children, does not once more set people asking at the libraries for that "fascinating picture of contemporary manners," the Memoirs of a Highland Lady, first published some fifteen years ago.
Among the more literary essays "Paul de St. Victor" is in some ways the most attractive, perhaps because the subject is not very familiar. Few English people know much of this writer, highly praised by Sainte-Benve, and one of the most fervently uncompromising admirers, unlike as the two men were, of Victor Hugo. The studies of Rousseau and of Richardson, in which their greatest books are analysed, are full of original and penetrating criticism. We note, for instance, Mrs. Andrew Lang's just remarks on the danger of taking the manners described in Richardson's novels for those of good society in his day. "He attributed the manners of his own class to those of the class above him." Proofs of this are plentiful and enlightening: the very inquiry is entertaining.
• Neu. Womm, and Misses. By MA',. Andrew fang, With Prefatory Note by Mr. Andrew Lang: Louden: ions-moms and Co. pa bd. nat.] In the short limits of a review there is no room even to touch on many of the charms of the book. But we must not close without mentioning the article on "French and English Minxes," in which Gyp's Bijou and Ariane stand side by side with Blanche Amory, Becky Sharp escaping more lightly than she deserves.
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