The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-09-08
Selected studies and Criticism.

Among the foremost of the French
dealers in forbidden fruit, canned for
export and domestic use, is M. Octave
Feuillet, whose wares are well known
to the American public. His novels are
the fine flower of the Byzantine litera-
ture of the second empire. They have
been freely translated and widely read
in this country.
To the French public, thus familiar
with the most high-fiown and the least
lawful passion, M. Feuillet gave a new
thing-he offered it the old and ever
welcome exhibition of amorous adven-
ture, deXterously yelled by a pretense
of morality. French morality is at
times rather humorsome, and in one
of it's freaks it chose to accept NJ
Feuillet's pseudo-delicacy and ultra
falsity of NJ. Feuillets ethics. The pub
lie was tired of the stormy souls in ir-
regular situations seen in the stories
of Hugo Dumas, George Sand. Meri-
NEE and MuSSet, and it was ready for
a novelty. M. Feuillet took Musset for
his model, turning his morality inside
out. Musset's morality was easy, to
say the least, and M. Feuillet's was
pretentiously paraded; his tender and
glowing interiors We're certified to con-
tain only a duly married couple.-Bran-
der Matthews.
Feuillet's novels are all dramas, with
well Reconstructed plots and striking
scenes. 1t may be that novel should
make us think and give us food for re-
Election, but it need not be primarily
an instructive work and it should not
be a work of science. Thus all pc
dantic display should be carefully elm
mated. There is pedantry in the
alysis of our psychological nov
eiists; they smell of the lamp
and suggest the instructor in mental
philosophy. There is a persistency in
the enumeration of our descriptive
novelists and in the display of docu-
nents by our scientific novelists which
is in the worst possible taste. Feuillet
spares us the tedium of these long pre-
liminaries; he gives us only the results
of his analysis, and his descriptions are
confined to a few lines, but he describes
with sure touch, he defines with the
exact words his language is always
clear, his style swift and supple His
choice of rare natures, whom he shows
to us under the influence of exceptional
sentiments and in the midst of start
ling events, is doubtless totally opposed
to the method of the realists. We may
prefer one system or the other, that
does not matter; an author is RESPONSE
bic to us. not for the system he chooses,
but for the use he makes of it.-Rene
Dounic.
Alphonse Daudet is of the same
school as lola. although not of the
same family. There exists as much dis,
similarity between these two novelists
as is possible between those who make
profession of naturalis1n. Profession?
In reality this word is much more ap-
pficable to lola than to Daudet, who
can scarcely be said to have acknowl-
edged any doctrine. In this consists an
evident divergence, and if we would
note the contrasts of their natures it
will be well to begin by opposing what
is deliberate and methodical in The one
with the spontaneity, the indifference
to doctrine and needless vivacity of the
other. In Daudet's Words lola pro-
ceeds like his engineer father; he adj
vances slowly and surely, daily tran
scribing his three or four pages with
mechanical regularity. Daudet COM
poses his novels much less than they
are composed unconsciously Writing
Wholesale" he throws ideas and events
upon paper without giving himself
time for complete or even a correct
wording. In this condition he leaves
them. to return later to his first in