"NATURE AT HOME."* To the English public, who chiefly know
M. Th6ophile Gautier in his double capacity of poet and novelist, the present work will cause some surprise. There is little of the author of Mademoiselle de Maupin and the Conies el Nouvelles in the pleasantly-written text of these pages ; and it is only here and there that M. Gautier's poetic instinct peeps out from amidst hie translator's prose. Let us, however, say at once that, whoever the unknown translator may be (his name is not on the title-page), he has done his work well and clearly. It was by no means an easy task to translate so fanciful a writer as Gautier, without rendering him either ridiculous or stilted ; but this has been accomplished, and though much of the delicate beauty of the original language has been inevitably lost, the total result is full of merit. The book is a curious one,—made up, we should fancy, rather than written, a republication possibly of casual notes or detached sketches, which have been originally written for some serial publication. It is divided into various chapters, by headings of somewhat fanciful phraseology, such as "Nature Indulges in Reverie," "Nature Provides a Breakfast," "Nature Dismisses her Guests," and so on, till most of the ordinary phases of woodland life have been lightly touched upon. We say woodland life, for Nature, as explained in this treatise, means always and only, the nature of the forest. And it is with the forest and its inhabitants that all the numerous illustrations are concerned. Whether the text was written to the illustrations or the illustrations to the text, who can say ? but the probability, considering the worth of M. Gautier's name, is in favour of the latter view. However, there are numbers of plates, both of full and double-page size ; and the book is evidently designed to rely for its attractiveness on these, They have been designed by a certain Karl BoOmer, and show all that knowledge of the technical parts of drawing, and that ignorance of all the more imaginative portions, which are so frequently found in the work of German artists. These drawings are chiefly concerned with landscapes, in which trees, ferns, and water, thick undergrowth, and over-hang- ing leaves, form the foreground of the picture ; whilst the background is an indistinct mass of boughs and foliage. We are thus particular in describing the char- acter of these illustrations, because we wish to point out the reason why we consider them to be of little interest, and, perhaps, even less merit. The one and only thing which can redeem from monotony illustrations of such a character, from which, that is to say, all the human interest in landscape is un- avoidably absent, is that whatever forms of natural things are dealt with, should be delineated with the utmost delicacy, and, if we may use the word, sympathy. The reason of this is a very simple one. Treatment of the kind which we have described, enables the artist to give, and the spectator to feel, an almost personal individuality in each little natural fact. As Ruskin pointed out very beautifully in the Modern Painters,
and, indeed, in more than one of his later books, the feelings of fellowship can be aroused to no small extent even in relation to inanimate things, if we can only connect them with ourselves by some fibre of sympathy; and even the rough boss of an oak's trunk has an almost personal meaning for us, if we regard it, as George Eliot once said, " as the .unsteady movement of a trunk whose best limb is withered." But if we fill our picture with nothing but generalised details, if we subtract from each leaf and bough the special character that nature and circumstance have created for it, then our design becomes merely an abstrac- tion of certain natural facts, and, like other abstractions, we pass it by coldly. The animals and birds in this work, are, upon the whole, treated in the same manner as the landscape, drawn, that is, with a certain mechanical dexterity, but • nothing else ; and it is notable that the manner of re- production which has been employed for the larger plates intensifies this defect. This method of illustration is, if we mistake not, one of the numerous processes of photo- * Nature at Rome. By Tbdophile Gautier. Loudon : Bradbury, Agnew, and co.
lithography, or photo-zincography, or some analogous process, and results in that spottiness and loss of delicate gradation, which is, in an artist's eyes, very terrible. And here it is, per- haps, worth while to say a word in objection to the custom, which is growing habitual, of not specifying upon the title. page what manner of reproduction has been adopted for the illustrations given in the book. This, which was unnecessary a few years ago, when there were practically but two or three possible methods of book illustration, is at the present day, when there are scores, if not hundreds, absolutely essential. To take a single instance, etchings can be reproduced now by photo- graphy with such likeness to the real thing, that except in the loss of certain artistic qualities little likely to be noted by an intending purchaser, they are absolutely identical, It is not impossible, now-a-days, to find books in which these photographic reproductions are made to do duty for the originals, to the great loss of their unfortunate possessor, who in a few years will probably discover for himself the cheat by the fading of the photograph, and who in any case is burdened with an article which has scarcely any appreciable money value.
The only way to give any idea of the peculiar flavour of this book is by quotation, and the following is a fair sample of how M, Gautier (seen through the medium of an English translation) looks at Nature. The subject is frogs.
" Frogs have the honour to have inspired the theme of many great poets,—Homer, Aristophanes, La Fontaine. The first has sung their struggle with the rats in a burlesque epopee ; the second made them the choristers in one of his most biting comedies ; the third entrusted to them the principal parts in several of his fables. They also appear in an old rural song, which we do not pretend to compare with the poetry of those divine masters, although it breathes a certain sentiment of imitative harmony by which the ear is soothed. We once heard it in a remote little village, where we used to spend our holidays, sung by a rustle Fate, who was spinning ou the threshold of her house ; and the air harmonised with the unceasing bass of the wheel, to which the tapping of the spinner's foot gave a well marked rhythm. These were the words
Rain, rain, soak, soak,— Hear the frogs croak ! The frog has made his nest In the stable with our sheep.
Our ewes are sick, Our lambs come quick.'
We do not know why these lines, which end in more or kiss imperfect assonants, strike us as savouring of witchcraft, and impart the sense of an incantation. They sound in our oar like rain-drops pattering against the window-pane, or trickling from leaf to leaf, or running spray-like down the sloping roofs. They make a monotonous, rip- • pling noise, like water falling into water, and give you a sensation of cold dampness, the dominant theme of which is frogs. It is at once a prognostic and study of rustic hygiene, such as is made by shepherds, who are always occupied with astrology and medicine, and are at heart something of sorcerers. If you are imprudent enough to allow yourself to be caught once by the fateful humming of this rainy sing-song, you can never again escape it ; you go on mur- muring mechanically, Rain, rain, soak, soak,' from morning till night, to the great inconvenience of your friends; unless, indeed, they, too, should be under the same influence, and join you in the chorus. Then the saw has all its teeth,' as they say in workshop
This is a fair specimen, and no one who reads can, we think, help seeing both the main virtue and the main vice of the book,
as far as its literary workmanship is concerned. It is just a little strained, as so much French domesticity is apt to be, or, at all events, is apt to seem to be, to an Englishman ; and it is un- doubtedly thin, almost filmy, in its substance. But it has that • one inestimable quality which is so rare in English writing of the present day,—the quality of style ; and even through the translation this shines brightly, as "the first star over the tower" on a summer evening. It has, too, though it is thrown in so carelessly as to be scarcely noticed, a touch of the true critical faculty, which takes account of technique at the very time it reaches beyond it, and goes down into the artistic heart of the matter.
Such as is this quotation, is the whole book, telling us little that is new, and perhaps not much that is strictly veracious ; but still, putting old things in a pleasantly and tenderly irre• levant manner, suggesting analogies which are, in a way, real, since they correspond to the artistic ideas, if not to the actual facts, of Nature, and throwing over the whole work just that touch of personal feeling which is so lacking in the accompany- ing illustrations. The book would have been more delightful as a simply-printed octavo volume, without its illustrations and cumbrous headings, &c. But even as it is, it comes as a stranger to the ordinary natural-history writing of England, and as a stranger we give it welcome.
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