TRAVELLERS' TALES.* THE literature of travel has now a host
of friends, and this is the age of anthology-making, so that it is rather strange that we have not been given before now any number of volumes of selected passages from travel books. But the fact remains that no branch of literature has been so little criticized or so seldom presented in selected passages as the literature of travel. For this reason this fairly large volume, of some four hundred and fifty pages, edited by Mr. Looker, is of some importance. Mr. Looker has been guided by the general interests of the ordinary reader of travel books rather than by purely literary interests ; and though he makes no _pretence of being exhaustive, he has obviously tried to cover the whole field within the limits of his single volume. Indeed, in spite of his disclaimer, we think he has been a thought too catholic and has weakened the interest of his collection by giving space—valuable space—to matter that is clearly outside the legitimate range of his collection. Thus, he has included a good deal of poetry in his selection ; and we come across such things as Tennyson's " Lotus Eaters," Leigh Hunt's Sonnet on the Nile ; Keats's " On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," and Browning's " Home-Thoughts, from the Sea," none of which can in
• Tnwei Old awi New. Edited by Samuel J, Looker, London: O'Connor. 12.1s.) any sense be called a contribution to travel literature, and all of which are so familiar that they do not even provide the editor with the reasonable excuse of quoting for quoting's sake.
Otherwise, considering the immense difficulty of his task, we think he has done very well. The selections are grouped under various headings, such as " The Lure of the Road," " En Route," " The Everlasting Hills," " The Unchanging East," " In the Jungle," " Perilous Seas," and so forth ; and there is a special, and very entertaining, chapter of passages in which the travellers describe their encounters with the ladies of far countries. Under these headings he has contrived to group an enormous number of passages from the three chief types of travel literature : the simple, straightforward records of the great explorers, such as the Elizabethan voyagers, Mungo Park, Franklin, Stanley and Scott ; the picturesque narrative of the literary travellers, who are legion and include men like Heine, Kingslake, Stevenson, Herman Melville, Borrow, Doughty, Cunninghame-Graham and Hilaire Belloc ; and, thirdly, the records, packed with close observation, of the scientific travellers, Humboldt, Waterton, Darwin and the rest. It is a pity that questions of copyright compelled him to exclude some of the best of the moderns, in particular W. H. Hudson, Lafcadio Hearn, Norman Douglas and Rudyard Kipling. But when Mr. Looker excuses himself for not including such persons, he says nothing of H. M. Tomlinson, whose magnificent Sea and Jungle he certainly ought to have plundered. He might, too, have found room (in place of things neither apt nor interesting) for something from Moritz's Travels in England in 1782, a very entertaining little book. And, to go still further back, he certainly should not have avoided, as he has done, that genial old liar, Sir John Mandeville, who probably did as much as any man to encourage the taste for this kind of literature. But we cannot afford to grumble, for there are over one hundred and eighty authors represented in this single volume, and most of them are old friends to whom we return with undiminished pleasure. The very contents list, which gives the name of each volume from which a passage is taken, is no mean bibliography for those who are just beginning to find pleasure in books of travel. Such persons, and there must be a great number of them now, should possess this volume. They can discover from it what attracts or repels them in all this host of travellers' tales, and can then become travellers themselves in this vast and rather bewildering literature. As a gift-book we recommend Travel Old and New without reserve. It will please everybody except those soured persons who care nothing for adventurous reading, and they, surely, do not deserve to have gifts.
Previous page
