THE STORY OF THE BOLD PgCOPENT.
The Story of the Bold Pecopin. By Victor Hugo. Done into English by Eleanor and Augustine BirrelL (Smith, Elder, and Co. Is. 6d.)—The humour of the "legend of the Rhine" is of the gigantesque kind. Pecopin is betrothed to the beautiful Bauldour. "One owned the forest," we are told, "the other the mountain," a description which reminds us of the "Loves of Hilpa and Shallnm" as they are told in another Spectator. The reader will find yet a second resemblance between Victor Hugo and Joseph Addison ; only post-diluvian lovers cannot afford to quarrel or part for any other reason for seventy years at a stretch. We must own that the meeting between Pecopin and Bauldonr, when it happens at last, was not a little disappointing. For books of this kind a happy ending ought to be made compulsory. But it is a fine, spirited story, with the grandiose air and out-of-the-way learning in which the great French master of romance delighted. The version by Mrs. and Mr. Binell shows much sprightliness and felicity. Mr. H. R. Millar's illustrations are vigorous, if just a little stagey, and the verse translation by Mr. Charles Tennyson not unworthy of his name.
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