CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
Impressions. By Pierre Loti. With an Introduction by Henry James. (A. Constable and Co. 105.)—We are not very fond of the new fashion of ushering in every other book with an " in- troduction " from the pen of some writer rather better known than the author of the book introduced. But if books must have introductions, Mr. Henry James chooses the better way of doing the business when, in chaperoning Pierre Loti, he talks not so much about the "impressions" in the volume his appre- ciation is to appear in, as about the mass of Loti's work pub- lished otherwhere, particularising the productions most to be admired, and explaining—as fax as it is possible to explain these matters—what is the peculiar combination of qualities that attracts us in this writer. Mr. James professes for Loti an affection so absolutely trustful that he thinks it better " to have no adven- tures of one's own," so as to be able to take the whole of life, if possible, through his "impressions" :—" He is the companion, beyond all others, of my own selection, for the simple reason that none other shows me so easily such far and strange
things It is simpler—and I say so quite without irony —not to have travelled, not to have trodden with heavier feet the ground over which we follow him. It is of the scenes I shall never visit that I like to read descriptions, and nothing, for that matter, would induce me to interfere with any impression happily received from him. The description, in fact, for the most part, only mystifies and irritates when memory is really in possession. I prefer his memory to my own, and am ready to think it no hard rule of life to have had, in my chair, to take so much of the more wonderful world from a little lemon-covered book." We cannot, however, agree with Mr. James in his worship of Loti. No doubt the latter is a great word•painter, but his sentimentality disgusts even more strongly than his insight and vividness delight. The volume is sumptuously got up in the attractive manner that denotes the " gift-book." But, for so beautiful and dainty a volume, it has been allowed to pass very carelessly through the hands of the proof-correctors.
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