The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-01-31
BOOKS OF THE HOUR
FOLKLORE TALES OF SOUTHERN
FRANCE. IN SAMUEL
BRUN.
VICTOR HUG0'S LETTERS.
BY AN AUTHOR FROM THE
FAR WEST.
onAucER's cANTERRuRY TALES
The Little Regiment and other Epi-
sOdeS of the American Civil War
by Stephen Crane.

The announcement of the publication
OF Victor Hugo's letters could rot fail
to arouse in the reading public an in
UereSt that from the first was doomed,
BY its own intensity, TO bitter disap-
pointment. If you cared more for
the correspondence of great men or
less for Victor Hugo himself. the let
ters to his father and wife-almost
open to ridicule though they are
might be of absorbing interest AS it
is the strained and stilted manner Of
dealing with trivial things, the gush
of his emotions, never meant for the
world, even the many times mentioned
knee breeches (they appear from first
thought to final delivery in about
seven different letters to Nine. Hugo
make matter for regret.
The letters show Victor Hugo to
have been a loving, devoted man IN
his own family and an enthusiastic
friend, if a somewhat suspicious one,
but apart from this the book does not
fulfill the earnest of its name. and IN
proportion as we reverence the master
we resent the poverty of some parts
of the volume meant in his honor. We
In Les Miserables' or ''Notre Dame
de Paris the sense of humor is not an
absolute necessity. but in home let
ters the total lack of it gives one the
strained pain of a mouse in a vac
uum.
1t is quite easy to see how much
these letters would mean to his chill
dren to the farthest generation, but
difficult in the extreme to CINE what
the editor could have hoped to gain
for either great man or public by the
publication of many of them.
The dullest are those to his father,
interesting, those to his
friends indeed, the further removed
from his own hearth ties the person to
whom he writes the better worth while
the letter Kind and loving as he is to
his own, he never wastes an idea upon
them his intellectual fire is for the
outer world and it is when he writes
TO his friends and at times to mere
strangers that we feel he has shown
the most Of himself His letters OF
courtesy to comparative strangers are
models for the copying and are so deX-
ferrous and polished that only a great
Frenchman could have written them;
and there are times, especially towards
the end Of the volume, where he is
Victor Hugo at his best,
To the Able de Lamennais he writes;
You have confirmed me in the con-
viction l have long held that a great
man lives with his genius as he writes
with his heart" And often it is both
self gives in these letters to his friends
C'Letters of Victor Hugo to His Family, to
Sainte-Beuve and Others" Edited by Paul
Meurioe. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. So. For
sale by E. w. Porter Company
The Little Regiment, and Other
Episodes of the American Civil War"
is the title of Stephen Cranes latest
volume. 1t contains half a dozen sto-
rieS of varying VigOr and interest. If
Mr.. Crane had not done more powerful
and significant work than this doubt
less these tales would strike the reader
as excellent. They are written with
mere restraint than The Red Badge
of Courage" exhibited and with
greater care for the details of the Eng
lish language, but what they gain
thereby in finish they have lost in
force. This loss is not, it is to be hoped
due to the greater pains with which
they are written. More probably it is
the result of the fact that Mr.. Crane is
two or three years older and the effeF-
NeScence of his youth is passing away
IN its place he does not yet offer us
the good wine of maturity. The disad-
vantage of being youthful prodigy
is that one cannot keep it up until one
IL something better. The Little Regi-
nient' may he said to belong to the
hobble-de-hoy stage of the authors in
toll 1oI IT, NJ.
eyer, is not to say that the book is
without excellent qualities. 1t is full Of
strong phrases and sentences, and the
fitle-story, which is by far the best
thing in the volume, is singularly sug-
gestiVe and fOrceful
THE Little Regiment by Stephen Crane
Paul Book and Stationery company
The reception the public has given to
Stephen Crane is, Withal little curl
Gus and worthy of consideration. The
author of The Red Badge of Courage"
was hailed as a prophet of a new fic-
tion-the critics laid hold of him, his
imaginative reality, his subjective in
tensity-and Mr.. Cranes fame was
made TO guard if he be able. Now. five
years before The Red Badge" was
published collection Of short stories
by Ambrose Bierce went its way from
EuDHSHeF TO puDlSnof and was re-
fused by one and all of them and
finally owed its printed form to the
confidence of a friend. Yet the Tales
of Soldiers and Civilians" are so much
in Mr.. Cranes spirit that had they been
published after instead of before his
fame was made the critics would have
called attention to one more "upstart
crow beautiful in his borrowed feath-
ers." Whether Stephen Crane has ever
read the war stories of Ambrose Rierce
and been Influenced by them to do
what he has done in his own way If
is of course impossible to say, but that
they are strong enough and tense
enough to impress him or any one with
similar trend Of spirit there can be
no doubt. That Mr.. Crane is a follower
of Mr.. Bierce 1t is possible to suggest
but not to maintain. His stories, re-
published now, are as good in some
ways as anything Stephen Crane has
written, save The Red Badge itself
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians" the
author has called them, and in a gen
eral way the title belongs; but then if
applies with equal felicity to Can't.
Kings stories of army life and nothiny
could be further from the mark. Had
the collection been called THE Book 7f
F. the Dead or 1.-The House of Fear" Il
would, perhaps, have kept it out of the
hands of nervous people-who really
should not read it-and brought il to
the attention Of those to whom it right
fully belongs. There are twentysone of
the tales Of varying strength. but not
of varying tenor.
few Of them are on the heights Of
human endurance and courage, but