THE MOUNTAIN.*
IT is a question which every reader must decide for himself how far a translator and his publishers are justified in turning a book fitted for being taken up and read into one fitted only for lying on a table and being looked at. La Montagne, in the original, is in the usual convenient form of French light literature, a form which it is much to be wished we could oftener take example from in this country. It is an unpretending volume, in good, clear print, but otherwise of almost severe simplicity in its outward apparel, which makes no scruples at going into a pocket, is light in the hand on a journey, and altogether invites familiarity. In the process of translation it has become an English picture-book, stiff with gilding and glazing, imprisoned in thick, heavy boards, and in- stinct from its birth with the solemnities of a respectable drawing- room table. For our own part, we may as well say outright that we reckon all such works amongst Charles Lamb's books which are no books. The illustrations distract us if we try to read the text, and the text dazzles us if we try to look at the illustrations. And then how can a thing be called a book which one cannot possibly read without a flat surface to lay it on? Truly an author whose words are put into these trammels must speak with the tongues of men and of angels before we can give him a fair hearing. However, we believe that there are people who like large picture-books with heavy bindings. We do not under- stand their aesthetic position, any more than that of others who still take pleasure in seeing large joints on their tables, but we suppose they must be provided for. M. Michelet's brilliant writing—too- brilliant frequently to bear much thinking over—seems to ua especially congenial to the airiness of a paper cover, and propor- tionally incongruous with the solidity of blue and gilt cloth. Moreover the style, which is often extraordinary in the French, comes to border on insanity in English. In saying this we do The Mountain. From the French of Michelet. With 54 Illustrations, from Designs by Percival Skelton. London: T. Nelson and Sons. 1872. not blame the translator, who could not have avoided this effect without running into the much worse course of weakening the author by paraphrase. Indeed, he has every now and then molli- fied the excessive abruptness caused by M. Michelet's passion for the figure of speech called by grammarians asyndeton, and in plain English leaving out all the conjunctions. We have only two things to say against him. The first is that his translation, though well writ- ten and generally faithful, sometimes falls into surprising mistakes indealing with particular idioms of the French language, e.g., halted now and then for s'arretait it temps. The second thing is that he has added too many notes of his own. The whole scope of the book presupposes a certain amount of general knowledge in the reader, and there is nothing to be gained by putting here and there at the foot of the page scraps of guide-book information, and even more rudimentary matters. For instance, there are to one paragraph two notes to tell us who Benvenuto Cellini and Claude were (the name of the latter, by the way, is written " Claude Lorraine," with a perversity really inexcusable when the
right spelling was plain to see in M. Michelet's own text). Still lees do we care to know that the translator does not appreciate Claude's painting. M. Michelet writes in a kind of dashing short- hand, and there is no middle course between leaving him to speak for himself and writing a running commentary on things in general.
For M. Michelet's La Montagne is concerned with a great many other matters besides mountains. It might be not unfairly described as a panegyrical discourse on the Earth, written for the most part under the influence of mountain scenery. M. Michelet is never weary of personifying and adoring the earth and the forces of nature in all possible aspects. The trees of the forest are to him living fellow-creatures. When he describes their battles in defence of the mountain whose flanks they guard against
the winter storms, it is not natural history, but a dramatic romance. $ut he reaches the climax of idealism when he gives his experience of a mud bath at Acqui,—" the divine mud which saved me." These were his impressions on the first sight of the babbling reservoir :—
" I fixed on this black living earth a serious gaze. I said to it :— 4‘ Dear common Mother! We are one. From you I came, and to you I return. Tell me, then, frankly, your secret. What is your hidden toil in the profound shades, whence you send up this warm, powerful, rejaveneseent soul, to make me live again? What do you there ?'— • What thou seest ; what I am doing now under thine eyee.' She spoke distinctly, in a somewhat low, but a gentle, and plainly a maternal voice. Men exaggerate her mysteries. Her work is simple and obvious in these regions, where, so to speak, she performs the function of the sun." [Not so: but ` operates in the light of day': the Fr. is fonctionne au soleit.] M. Michelet goes on to describe the immersion. For the first few days his feelings were vaguely delicious. Gradually he became able to distinguish successive stages of ecstasy : in the first quarter of an hour, calm reflection : in the second, an absorption of all other thought in the one idea of Terra Mater, ending in a consciousness of complete identity with Earth :— " The buried body was happy, and it was I. The head, which remained unburied, lamented, and was no longer I; at least, I thought so. Such was the perfect marriage, and more than the marriage, between me and the Earth ! One might more fitly have called it an exchange of nature. I was Earth and she was Man. She had taken upon her shoulders the weight of my infirmities and my sins ; while I, in becoming Earth, had assumed her life, warmth, and youth."
Not long after this comes a digression much in the same spirit on the great continents of the Eastern and Western hemispheres, which is brought in under the head of " Sea Deux Grandes Mon- tagnee appeldea Continents." The earth is here " ce bel et prodigieux etre beau dans son élan harmonique—expansif 43t contenu—vers la lumiere, l'amour, la vie." Its motions in its orbit, its electrical, oceanic, and atmospheric currents, are all spoken of as vital processes. The American continent is " tie superbe dragon, enflamme, qui dompte les mere."
These few characteristic passages may give some notion of M. Michelet's manner, but nothing short of looking through the book itself will show the reader what a variety of subjects he has touched upon. The aurora borealis, the volcanoes of Java, the pastrycooks of the Engadine, all came under the illumination of his Parisian lime-light. We return to the portion of the work which is more immediately concerned with mountains. The first sight of a glacier is not uncommonly disappointing. M. Michelet's impression on looking out from his hotel at Grindel- weld was extremely unfavourable. At first it seemed to be coming right in at the window. " Vraiment, rien de plus formidable. C'dtait an chaos lumineux qui semblait tout pres dejk des vitrea, voulait 4entrer." It was like a constellation bursting on the earth. When he saw that it was really not so close, it appeared no longer so terrible, but still monstrous, ugly, and insolent. "Il faut voir
ces objets de loin. De pres, sans value podsie, rien ne semblait plus grossier, plus apre, plus rude." Of course this impression
was modified afterwards, and M. Michelet goes on to talk of the glaciers in civil terms enough. Amongst other things, he men- tions the curious fact that popular tradition in the Alps told of a glacial epoch before it was recognized by science. But he does not seem to have acquired any real love for the glaciers, and he
has a profound contempt for all Alpine climbers later than.Sans- sure. This is M. Michelet's notion of modern mountaineers :—
" II fent entendre li-dessus minx qui en savant les plus, les guides, qui les hissent la-haut, qui pour quelque argent leur donnefit co plaisir de gloriole, qui jusqu'aux glaciers lour portent lea mete, lea vies, lea liqueurs. Its content avec quel danger ile dirigent k la descents ces grands marmots, lyres, troubles, leur tenant dee escaliers, posant cheque foie le pied, convent ne ponvant s'en tirer qu'en les portant a la lettre, les enlevant dans les bras."
We do not know from what sort of guides M. Michelet has derived his information, but we do know that a quarter of an hour's talk with any of the leading men either of Chamouni or the Oberland, or half-an-hour's inspection of the Journals of either the English or the Swiss Alpine Club, would have told him a very different story. His description may be true of certain tourists who rush to Mont Blanc or Monte Rosa, insist on being taken up without any previous training, and never go near a mountain again. No doubt many persons do undertake these and more difficult expeditions with very confused notions as to what is required of them, but M. Michelet is grossly deceived when he gives an exaggerated account of such happily exceptional cases as if it applied to all Alpine climbers indiscrim- inately. It is no less absurd to suppose that all a traveller has to do to surmount a considerable pass or peak is to let himself be carried by the guides, than to run into the opposite error of pre- sumption, and fancy that amateur travellers can ever hope to rival the guides on their own ground. The relation between guides and travellers who have learnt to know and trust one another is very different from that between a porter and a bale of goods.
However, we must not be too hard on M. Michelet. We cannot expect a sympathetic understanding from one who has never known the delights of the higher regions ; and perhaps M.
Michelet wrote under provocation. He may have been ex- asperated by people bustling about in small inns with big boots and ice-axes, or he may have met tourists of the wrong sort, who think it shows a true mountaineering spirit to appear at table d'hiite unwashed and collarless, and talk in a loud voice all dinner-time (carefully omitting to mention the guides) of the number of steps cut in their last ascent. And he has some remarks which are really fine on the moral effect of mountain scenery. Possibly he may even yet come to believe that there are more than two or three Englishmen (" Un Tyndall, deux ou trois noms honords, ne peuvent faire illusion ") who can be trusted to set foot on the Alps without profaning them.
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