The Princess of Cleves. By Madame de la Fayette. Translated
by Thomas Sergeant Perry. 2 vols. (Osgood, McIlvaine, and Co.) —The publishers have certainly done their best to secure a present- day English audience for one of the most famous French romances of the seventeenth century. The delicate white covers, with their gilded designs, the thick luxurious paper, the perfect typography, and the dainty illustrations drawn by M. Jules Gamier and en- graved by M. A. Lunette, combine to render this new edition of The Princess of Cleves charming to every bibliophile. Whether the romance itself will nowadays attract many admiring readers, is much more doubtful. It has an interest to the student of French literature as indicating an epoch, a new departure. As M. Anatole France says in his pleasing introduction, "Madame de la Fayette was the first to introduce naturalness into fiction,—the first to draw human beings and real feelings." This is a perfectly just eulogium, and yet both the scheme and treatment of the story have a certain reticent formalism, like that of even the most unre. strained intercourse of a court, which will seem artificial to readers of the free-and-easy literature of a democratic age. There is doubtless true passion in the book, anal passion makes a universal appeal ; but when, as here, it appears in the disguise of a courtly gallantry which never forgets the full-dress proprieties, its true character is apt to be missed by a generation to which gallantry is a lost art. Then, too, Madame de la Fayette has the deliberateness which characterised all the older romancers, and the slow movement of the action will almost certainly try the patience of the reader educated in the school of Mudie ; yet we still believe that, in spite of these disadvantages, The Princess of Cleves will not be found wanting in charm by any cultivated per- son who will give it a fairer trial than half-an-hour's hasty inspec- tion. It has grace, refinement, well-bred sprightliness, and it has also the essential truth to human nature and human passion on which M. France lays so much stress, His introduction is, it need hardly be said, an admirable piece of work, full of information and just in criticism.
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