The herald., 1896-05-03


heart and the hopes. There is much
registering and rhyming, much beer and
smoke and badly kept nights; and yet
Bohemia is beautiful, for it means youth
and strength and high hopes and free
dom from the worries that tear the
nerves apart and make the fibres in the
flesh to stand on end. 1t is poverty and
privation. but they do not destroy, and
the dreams and aspirations of this
strange domain pave the way for the
sobrieties of middle age and all that
must follow.
And Bohemia has it's calms and con-
tentments. Who was it who sang?
''Idwelt in a city enchanted,
And lonely. indeed. was my lot:
Two guineaS week. all wanted
Was certainly all that | got.
Well. somehow. found 1t was plenty,
Perhaps you may find it the same.
I-if you are Just Internationally.
Very much of the same way of think
Ing was dear old Thackery, who dwelt
In Bohemia and wrote of it:
'With pensve eyes the little room view.
Where in my youth, 1 weathered it so
long:
With Wild mistress, a staunch friend or
And light heart still breaking into song:
Making mock of life and all its cares.
Rich in the glory of my rising sun.
Lightly vaulted up four pair OF stairs
In the brave days when L was twenty
one"
There Is something very touching.
very human in Bohemian tradition. OF
the wsywardness and vices the world
loves to be charitable, for life is larger
and better than a single estate in it or
of it, Who lays up against the young
person who is lacking in thrift or even
sobriety. il only these came of youth
and it's passing show? Would the world
have cared more for Goldsmith if he had
never wandered abroad and even sung
for bread at the wayside innn? Would
there have been tenderer memory for
Burns If Re had never rollicked before
the blaZ' log in the days and nights
when he g in his twenties? Somehow
the world feels that youthful sinnning
and suffering for it go together and
square each other in the matured make
up of later years; and thus. though
Bohemia may be a region of dreadful
darkness to those who have always been
the children of light, it has beeen beauti-
full to many, and will ever be--nor does
1t often quite kill at the worst.
= r
GLORIFYING THE NOVELIST-We
love, of all things, to be amused. Sc
rious study of fine, strong works we
do not indulge in as a rule for 1t is
working for facts and helps that we
can get second hand or go without them.
The Dial has a very interesting arti-
Gle on this subject, whose conclusions
do not f1attter us as q nation, though
they are evidently just 1t draws
comparison between what has been
done for the world by Mr.. Rider Hag-
gard and Herbert Spencer, and then
compares what the world has done for
them respectively. A few rather low
grade novels-certainly not high
grade of fiction-have brought to their
author more material help than forty
years of the best work the world of
science has ever seen earned for him
who built up a magnificent edifice of
thought, monument that will lasts for
all time in the realm of the best litera-
ture.
But not only do we neglect the wholly
good and great in literature and give
ourselves up to novel reading, but we
read the poorest, il it be new and cry
out for more. 1t is this poor standard
that we are responsible for, because we
have made it, OF this phase of the sub
ject the article says and says truly:
Frof. Brander Matthews, in recent
magazine ARTICLE, draws an ingenious
parallel between the art of novel writ
ing and the game of whist DR.. Pole
recognizes four stages in the evolution
or whist, the primitive game, the game
OF Hoyle. the philosophical game and
the latter-day Improvements Four
stages not dissimilar to these NAV be
recognized in the evolution of the novel
Prof. Matthews dubs them the impossi-
BILE, the improbable, the probable and
the inevitable stages The Arabian
flights. Les Trois Mousquetaires, Van
ity Fair and the Scarlet Letter are given
as examples of the four kinds of fiction
But just as all four forms of the game
are still practiced by different sets of
payers the latter having failed to dis
place the earlier ones, so all the four
forms OF fiction are still produced by
ulHerent sets of writer's, and each still
finds it's own public. The parallel is
interesting and reasonably justified bv
the Facts. but it's formulator should have
added that there is and ALWAYS has been
a fifth kind of fiction corresponding to
the variety of whist known as buinble
puppy. And our pride in the develop-
ments that tn art of fiction
mas mas unquestionably made during
the last half century must
be considerably tempered when
we reHect that the great mass of modern
hoVeis comes from writer's who do not
play the game in accordance with the
rules or any system, primitive of phil
osophlcal In word, the ascendancy
or notion in our latter day literary pro-
duction is not altogether the mark of
heightened appreciation of art
The triumph of the novelist is to a con-
siderable degree triumph of inepti-
tude over ability, of lower over higher
Ideals, of slovenly over painstaking
workmanship, of incoherence and dis
proportion over measured and organic
art
4 r
THE REDS OF THE MIDE An epi-
sode of the French Revolution.
translated from the Provencal of
Felix Gras. BY Catherine A. Jam
vier with an Introduction by Thorn
as A. Janvier. D. Appleton & Co,
New York.
Here is story of marvellous power
and directness. all in one of the most
striking stories of the French Reyolu-
tion that we have ever seen. It Is a
great French romance, finely trans
lated 1t tells how Pascolet went with
the Marseilles battalion straight to cap