The herald., 1893-02-26
ABOUT BOOKS AND BOOKMAKERS.
Gustave Flaubert's SalammbO
in an English Dress.
Recent Popular Publications of Bill
Nye's Humorous Books.
Henry Drummond's Unique Address
ssThe Oity without q Church, and
It's Teschin gs-Notes About
Writers and Writings.
TBY L. BEHYMER.]

Lowell, Coryell & Co. are publishing q
very nice line in the Lowell Illustrated
series. One OF the later ones just pub
lished by them is reproduction OF
work entitled Salammbo. by Gustave
5 Flaubert, Englished by NJ. French Shell
don. 1t is we'll to call the story OF
Ealammbo the resurrection of Carthage; !;
and for those who doubt the skill OF the
magician, ae some were found to doubt
when the work was first published, they
have only to turn to the simple narra-
tive OF the truceless war between the
Oarthaginians and those barbarian mer-
J cenaries whom they could not or would
not pay for their long services, to zee
! how grand spectacle has been grouped
about the war which historians regarded
~ interesting.
Flaubert follows the historic facts with
the closest fidelity, save in the
two or three simple cases in
which he has changed the date
of an occurrence in order to heighten
the dramatic force of the narrative. The
great Hamilcar Barca, the father of Han
nibal, had sent home the barbarian fol-
lowers with whom he had been waging
his difficult war in Sicily, with instruc-
tions that they were to be paid off by
detachments. But the Carthaginians,
who had grown covetous after the many
privatione which their foreign cam
paigns had cost them, declined to pay
the mercenaries, but let them rest in
idleness and feasting until they were
thoroughly angersd and mutinous, and
then sent them to another town with
instructions to await the money. Here
Greeks and Iherians, Libyans and Ligur-
ians, Balearic singers and runaway
slaves, finally revolted, and headed by
Spendius, the crafty Greek, Matho, the
Libyan, and Autharltus, the Gaul,
marched back to Carthage to begin the
stupendous siege which Hamilcar finally
crushed by his gigantic efforts, and which
be punished with cruelty almost with
out parallel. Speudius and Authoritus,
and the other minor chiefs were cruel
fed but Matho was taken prisoner and
put to death, being led in triumph
through the streets of the Carthage
which he had 80 long threatened and
defed during the score of years separat-
ing the first from the second Punic wars.
Polybius characterizes the struggle as
more cruel md inhuman than any other
of which he had heard.
Upon this Faubert has grated the
bewitching tale of the fierce and seneu-
ous passion of Matho, the Libyan chief,
for Salammbo, the daughter of Hemii-
car. Matho, aided by Speudius, pene.
trates into Carthage by night during the
siege, enters the temple of Tauit and
carries off tho mysterious veil of the
goddess, whom the Carthigenians held
In q special and peculiar ven
GRAFTON. Clad in this mantle, which
to look upon WAS proclamation
for the worshipera, he passes into the
private aparts of Salammbo, there de-
clares his passion and then retires, Sc
rene and composed before the mob
which comes to kill him, but dares not
touch him because of the sacred veil or
mantle. He carries this talisman into
the camp of the barbarisns and thither
Salammbo, commanded by the priests
comes to rescue it at whatever risk oi
life or of virtue. Matho delivers it up.
The conservation OF the loves of the bar
barian and the daughter of Hamilcar il
the fruit of this interview and thence
forward the story moves nobly through
succession of grand military scenes in
terspersed with delightful pictures oi
the intimate and familiar life within
Carthage, until 1t arrives at its tragi,
close, serene as that of an epic, in whicI
Salammbo dies after she has seen th,
captured Matho slain at her feet Will,
che stands on the throne beside tn
bridegroom to whom her father ha
given her.
The exquisite humanity of all tn,
central figures in the book, which woult
make an illustrious play, is here an,
there almost Shakespearean. 1t is tru'
that Flaubert, with his exaggerate,
dread OF display of sensibility, has some
times 30 hurried along the impetuou
torrents OF the narrative that one ex
periences a sensation of breathlessness
desire to catch at something ant
1inger by the way. So too, the French
critics have accused him of insufficien
sense OF contrast, of making all hi
pictures too imposing. Singularly strik
ing as the figure and character of Salam
mbo are, poetic and sensuous as are til
descriptions of her worship on tn
house tops, her communion with th
sacred serpent, and her alteration c
Fanit, and the other false gods an
goddesses of Carthage, the great fgur
in the book is that OF the veteran father
Hamilcar, the admiral of the seas, tn
master of slaves and of the lives of mer
the politician and the leader, the prime
of expedients and of strategy, the fathe
of the general who was to cross the Alp
and fall with his army upon bewildere
Italy like storm of fire.
From the first entrance of Hamilca
into the story we breathe larger all
we feel the impression of truth, and {
transcript from the truth. 1t is as
Flaubert himself were one OF the al
clients, and had written what he said an
knew, even es Polybius did.
There 10 something infinitely touchir
and friehtful at the same time in IL
portrait of Hamilcar, in his passiona
admiration and love for the little Hal
nibal, In the grand description OF
mastery of the elders and patricial
when he returns from hiH Sicily, in b
pilgrimages through his farms ar
among his slaves, in his contemplate
Of his almost countless treasures, az
finally In his semi- bar baric eacrifices
Moloch, and the ferocious joy wi
which he ssizss upon Speudius and tt
other dying chiefs when he has entic,
them into their death trap.
Yet 6alammbo is noble as a daught
of the gods-noble in her maiden CO
temptation Of mysteries which she da
not even think Of fathomiDg; noble
her self-sacrifice for Carthage: noble
her fathers wrath at what he thinks h
fall from the high virtue befittinp
daughter of Hsmilcar; noble in t
midst of those patrician splendors viii
EIauhavt dsacyihas with puch Waalth