SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
['Under this heading we notice such Books of the meek as have not bun reserved for review in other forms.] . The .Life of Hector Berlios : as Written by himself in his Letters- apti.Mfmoirs, translated from the French by Katharine F. Boult (" Temple Autobiographies," edited by William Macdonald; 1; M. Dent and Co., Bs. 6d. net), forms a compact and attractive. volume to look at and handle. The proposition laid down by Miss Boult in her introduction—viz., that the estimate of Berlioz formed on his Memoirs needs to be revised in the light of his letters—is, we think, perfectly sound. It is also true that the Memoirs contain a good deal of matter which appeals only to those who are interested in the technique of the orchestra. A good case is thus made out for the issue of an abridged version of the Memoirs, supplemented by such letters as illustrate the typical traits of his strangely mixed character. Such a work however, can only be justified by results, and we fear that no one who has had the privilege of reading the Memoirs or Letters in the original can be satisfied with the way in which this condensation ha beep carried out. The "Life" in its new form is less than half as long as the Memoirs alone. But even so, it. is not Berlioz with excisions that has been given U5; it is a paraphrase, almost a precis, of what remains. Thus the charm of Berlioz's brilliant, nervous style has almost entirely disappeared. And so far as we have compared the paraphrase with the original, we are not impressed with the accuracy of the rendering. For example, in the grue- some scene in the dissecting-room Berlioz, after describing how he, sprmeunted his initial disgust, speaks of his becoming as callous as a carabin. This Miss Bonn "translates" "an old soldier in his fiftieth battle." Carabin means a "sawbones," not an old soldier at all. Strange to say, the same mistake wait made ip the terribly inaccurate translation of the Memoirs in
two volumes published by Messrs. Macmillan in 1884, which, with all its countless blunders, gives a far better notion of one of the most fascinating of autobiographies than this truncated edition a. 14 Castilblaze.
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