RECENT FRENCH LITERATURE.*
M. LE VICOMTE DE SPOELBERCH DE LOVENJOUL is the most ingenious detective that ever set himself to discover the secrets of the past. No sources of evidence are too remote for him. He haunts the auction-room, and rifles the columns of long-forgotten journals. By this time his collections must be priceless, and with an uncommon generosity he is always ready to let the world share his treasures,—at second-hand. The conspicuous victims of his method are Balzac, Stendhal, and Georges Sand, and while you tremble for his forthcoming work upon the author of Lelia, who is still a general incentive to indiscretion, you can only praise him for the amiable light which he has thrown upon the work and life of Balzac. And surely no writer of the present century affords such admirable sport to the literary detective as the author of the Comidie liumaine. Expansive beyond all others in his work, Balzae was resolute in the secrecy of his life. The weight of debt, which never left his back, rendered him always furtive and suspicious. Even at home he lived in a state of siege, and while his contemporaries knew little of his enterprises, he has constantly baffled the ingenuity of his biographers. But • (L) Awtour de Honor i de Balms. Par le Vfooutte tie Spoe'berelt de Leven- Joni. Paris: Levy.—(2.) Pensortu Renege- 7 Par Jean de Tinan. Park Idereere de France.—(3.) Voyageuees. Par Paul Beerget Paris: Lemerre. —(4.) Les Lauriera sant Coupes'. Par Edouard H.jardin. Paris: Marcum de Franc*.
little by little M. de Lovenjoul is piercing the mystery, and his Autour de Honorg de Balzae is an admirable collection of documents, which some time will help to complete the novelist's biography. The book is the more welcome because it is neither indiscreet nor morose. Despite his eagerness to penetrate the past, M. de Lovenjoul treats it with a dignified respect, and the first chapter is an account of the loyal friendship which existed for many years between Balzac and Gautier, and which did equal honour to them both. All the world has known that "La Talipe," the famous sonnet of Lucien de Rubenmpre, was Gautier's own, but all the world did not know the part which the author of Mademoiselle de 3faupin took in the composition of the Chef-d'ceuvre ineonnu, and M. de Lovenjoul gives you documentary evidence of the collaboration. Still more interesting is the history of the Ecole des Ménages, the unfor- tunate play which Balzac wrote for the Renaissance Theatre. The play, rejected then, has never since been acted, and so strangely has half a century obscured it that only one copy, M. de Lovenjours own, exists to-day. Such are the trifles which, with a valuable bibliography of Balzac's letters, make up an interesting volume. And one hopes that M. de Lovenjoul will continue his work ; for if he be not a biographer, he is a diligent collector of such stuff as biographies are made of, and withal the most amiable and discreet of literary detectives.
M. Jean de Tinan's Penses-tu ? is the work of a young man, and bears upon every page the attractive imprint of youth. It is fresh, candid, gay, and ingenuous. Above all things, it is intelligent ; and the brain which contrived these dainty scenes and pierced the trivial motives of Raoul de Yallonges is capable of more enduring work. The book has no plan, and is rather introspective than adventurous. But the touches of character are seldom false, and the conversations, with their light pretence of erudition, are most wittily handled. Moreover, the sudden revival of the Vie de Boheme gives to Penses-tu Ileussir ? an added interest. The material of both is the same, and yet how different the treatment ! At the outset it must be confessed that the Vie de Bohenze has a far greater power of displacement or attachment (or what you will) than its latest successor. No one will ever speak of M. de Tinan as the inventor of a genre or the creator of eternal types. Yet in many respects the younger writer has the advantage. In the first place, it is part of his heritage to command a far better style than Murger had ever imagined. His phrase is more alert, less hackneyed, than that which seemed efficient forty years ago. Then, again, he approaches the Bohemia of his experience in a spirit of analysis and criticism. To him it is neither fairyland nor the shades, but merely the rather foolish and amusing world through which the youth of France must pass on the road to science and distinction. Murger, on the other hand, being a true romantigue, made a desperate effort to sentimentalise squalor ; and his extraordinary popu- larity is due to the belief that, being the inhabitant of a strange world, he took the common citizen into his confidence. Now M. de Tinan cares nothing for romanticism ; he merely dissects familiar scenes and sentiments. Wherefore he will neither invent catchwords nor bequeath a cult to the people. But he has written a clever, entertaining book, which, besides, has more of promise than of performance.
M. Paul Bourget is a cosmopolitan, and he is most anxious that the world shall never forget it. He would have us know that he is as easily at home in Ireland as in the Far East, and that, while America is even more familiar to him than his native Paris, Italy is the real country of his adoption. Sometimes he is tempted to ask that the word Senese should be written upon his tomb, and if his work be any guide to his life, surely he spends his days in a Pullman car. His last book, Voyagenses, is not different in motive or design from the long series which has preceded it. M. Bourget's characters travel as zealously as himself. From Paris they flit to Corfu or Siena, to New York or Neptunevale. The result is as tire- some as an eternal tour. To place hero and heroine in an unaccustomed environment was interesting enough twenty years ago. But the trick, invented in America, and only imitated by M. Bourget, has been played too often. In truth, it is difficult to read this last example with patience. The American woman of fashion who prefers Europe to the home of her money-making husband, the refined Parisians who are start.4.a 1.-.y the banshee of Western Ireland_
seem so hackneyed in their emotions that th4 give the im• pression of mechanical toys. There is, moreo\ver, a kind of snobbery in this constant travelling by enAart trains,— the same snobbery which induces the Parisian dandy to have his linen washed in London. But the art of fiction is quite other than the art of the dandy or of the guide-book, and M. Bourget's Voyageuses are too expert in the use of the time-table, and too intent upon the habits of the steamboat, to be emotionally interesting. The novelist con- fesses that he keeps upon his writing-desk a bundle of note- books, labelled each with the name of a strange country, and from these he evokes the images of women he has met for a week, a day, an hour. Some of his readers would prefer that he should lay aside his geographical notebooks, and write a story in which steamers and railway trains are unknown. But M. Bourget is so faithfully wedded to the American method that he is never likely to forget his cosmopolitanism ; and doubtless he will continue until the end the imaginative 13deker whom we know so well.
In no work of fiction has the unity of time ever been more rigidly observed than in M. D ujardin'sLes Lauriers sant Coupees, for the action occupies a briefer period than is necessary for the reading of the story. But in revenge the smallest details of the hero's dress, the doubt, hesitation, and inconstancy of his mind, are rendered with a scrupulous fidelity. In brief, the materials are as slight as possible, yet they are treated with so fine a sense of humour, and in so admirable a style, that the story deserves a place apart. For it resembles nothing else in literature, and is far too good to be bound up with the other stories and prose-poems which give to the volume its proper size.
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