BOOKS.

PROVENCAL IDYLLS.* EVERY year the influence of reviews has less to do with the circulation or the failure of a book. The public maw enlarges itself, and must he fed with printed matter of some kind. Readers are gluttons, not connoisseurs, and so the canons of

* Loiters from My Min. From the French of Alphonse Daudet, By Mary Corey. London : TrIlimer end Co. 1880.

Leirrio, ae Mon Moulin. Pox Alphonse Daudet. Twelfth Edition. Paris Tietzel ot (lie.

taste are set at naught, and the niceties of intellectual and imaginative work meet less and less appreciation. Still, " rowing hard against the stream," it remains the reviewer's duty tcs protest against bad work when he finds it, and perhaps none of our literary work is so badly done as are our translations from the French.

It seems as if any one who has learnt to read French with tolerable ease may undertake to render the works of the best French writers into such English, as with the help of a dictionary,. the translator can command. But what chance is there that an inexperienced and probably dull writer can use his own language with equivalent skill to that of a Daudet or a Feuillet, an About or a Cherbuliez. Books which treat of science or of history, and authors like Victor Hugo or George Sand, who by the breadth of their sympathies secure European interest, bear translation, even by writers who are quite incapable of originating the thoughts they render ; but in literary work the beauty of which. lies chiefly in its expression, form becomes so important, that no fidelity to sense can make amends for a clumsy style. Any jat. to our taste spoils the charm of writing that appeals to the cultivated and highly artificial sense of fitness and harmony, as do the finer trifles of French novelists.

But the book market cares little for taste. A Cremona violin is to "the general" but a fiddle that can play tunes. M.. Daudet, however, has written half-a-dozen successful novels,. the least artistic of which dealt with gossip of the Second Empire, and, therefore, had the best sale ; his name secures his translators from monetary risk, and, of course, industrious. persons are ready to "rush in" where wiser writers "fear to tread." Few modern volumes have the subtle charm of style' that these Lettres de Mon. Moulin possess. They sparkle, with airy brightness. They depict an Arcadia so delightful, that we are fain to believe it real. They please our fancy without. strain or fatigue, as nothing but good French work can do.. They do not stir our deeper feelings as German or English stories might. The author makes no appeal to our egotism by suggesting that we are in any way concerned in his puppets,, except to note how gracefully they play their part ; and his book is full of diffused light, so that even the men and women in it cast less gloomy shadows than those of real life. His Provence. is, like the sea that plays along its shores, now passionate, now serene, but never of the dull leaden hue which the northern atmosphere can give to Nature.

True artist as he is, M. Daudet makes it his first care to render' his personal impression of the feathery pine-slopes and the iride- scent sea. But he conveys no lesson and points no moral when he describes the half-tamed paganism of the people, among whoni are shepherd fauns and wood-nymphs not altogether un- conscious of the kindly Pan. Here and there a note less sweet is struck by the truant Parisian, but it only emphasises the delicate airs and pastoral harmonies that play round his mill.. The " impression " he has set before us in pen and ink is,. notwithstanding its poetry, or perhaps because of the poetry of the writer, extremely realistic and personal. We believe with. perfect faith in the ruined wind-mill which M. Daudet bought,. in the heart of Provence. We could make a far better drawing of it than the illustration on the cover of the English edition,. which might represent a mill in an English midland county..

We rejoice that the new proprietor allowed the ancient owl of the upper room to retain its lodging. The wild vines and tangles. of Provençal brushwood, which witness to the idleness,of the great sails they have overgrown, are as pleasant to us as if the place were ours ; and we love the rabbits keeping high festival on the plat- form of the mill as much as did the owner of it, who set himself

to woo and win the confidence of the living creatures he delights,

to describe. Though one or two of these sketches are piteous and even tragic, there is little alloy of human care or taint of.

human evil in them. Here and there a grotesque head or an

impish hoof make part of his design, as in Raphael's arabesques of the Vatican Loggie. His work is BG racy of southern.

France, and its distinctive tone is so sustained, that its sadder traits are subdued in the breadth of sunlight. The innkeeper's wife and the golden-brained martyr are not out of harmony with the old-world legend of the Pope's mule, invented to explain a Provencal proverb. We trust our readers understand their French well enough to appreciate the mortifications of that insulted beast, which has become notorious through all time for its revengeful kick, in -which was concentrated the rancour of seven year..? growth.

As if to prove how wide a range is possible within the strict

limit he has imposed on his art, M. Daudet takes us from the farandoles and merriment of Avignon and its Pontifical Dagobert, to a lighthouse and the hard life of its watchmen. He has told the story of the' Semillante,' wrecked at night, with six hun-

dred men aboard, so as to make his readers feel the horror of the ghastly seaboard on which day broke. We seem to hear and see the shepherd who had been an idiot since that morning when, going down to the rocky shore, he found the dead in heaps among the tangles of shattered rigging and sea-wrack. Of these idylls, the most pathetic is perhaps the picture of the two old people living in the bourg of Eyguieres, whose grandson in Paris, long absent from them, had asked the author to visit on his behalf. We heartily admire its true sentiment of parental and filial ties, which are still the strongest of social bonds wherever the traditions of old France are yet alive. If he had written nothing else, M. Daudet must have made his mark by these few pages of description. When half regretfully he shuts up his mill and starts on his kindly mission, we go with him along the white dusty roads, by the sun-scorched arid sides of which only the cicalas gave sign of life. All the world was in the fields, and in the village an ass, airing himself in the sun-flooded square, seemed the only inhabitant. The author had been told that the old folk of whom he was in search lived hard by the orphanage. But how to find the orphanage he knew not, until he spied a vener- able crone, spinning as she crouched in the shadow of her door Lifting her distaff as a fairy might her wand, she pointed out the way. No translation could give the charm of the descrip- tion of the long, cool, quiet passage, with rose-coloured walls, at the end of which glimmered in the sunlight a little garden dimly perceived through a light-coloured blind. Faded paint- ings of violins and flowers decorated the panels, which might have belonged to some old " bailli" of Sedaine's time. From an open door to the left came the tic-tac of the big clock, and a child's voice reading in dame-school fashion, with a pause between each word. Quietly looking in, we see, with the writer, the dear old man sleeping in his arm-chair; rosy-checked, open-mouthed, with hands wrinkled to the finger-ends that rested on his knees ; while the little girl, who read from a book bigger than herself the life of St. Irenams, kept the flies on the ceiling, the canaries in the cage, and all within hearing, in a. sleepy trance. Only the broad band of light which fell straight and white between the closed shutters seemed awake, and to be full of living sparks and microscopic dances.

We arc half tempted to abate somewhat of our assertion that there is little gloom or sadness in this volume, when we reed a second time the story of the blind artist, Bixiou. It is a reminiscence of the Paris streets, that haidly suits the Provençal atmosphere. I3ixiou, the worn-out caricaturist, full of venom because of his failure to obtain a Cbvern- meat licence for selling tobacco, could never have been a guest at the mill. Yet the art of his presentation condones the pain of it. M. Daudet does not harrow his readers, in this, at least, of his works, by sordid details, or flatter the modern craving for what is horrible. He follows in these " letters " the traditions of French literature in its best period ; and, fortunately, French literature has authoritative traditions. We do not know why his translator has omitted some of the sketches, but the list of her subjects differs from that given both

in the second and twelfth edition of the book. Possibly she may have thought it better to suppress the story of Pre Gaucher's elixir, but why was "La Chevre de M. Seguin" left out? It was certainly difficult to render in English prose, but not more so than other stories valiantly attacked by the translator. " L'Arlesienne," a glimpse of Provencal manners that it is a pity to put aside, is but badly replaced by "The Stars," a shepherd's story, of which we do not know the original, and, therefore, we cannot judge how far M. Daudet is responsible for its .sentimentality. Meantime, the translator is certainly responsible for frequent carelessness, even in the mechanical labour of finding an equivalent word for the original when one exists. " Bete " cannot be rendered by "wrinkled." " Coches," on the RhOne, are not witches, but barges. " SUNBOB d bedaines dordes " cannot be turned into "guards with golden helmets," with any respect for the author's meaning. A. " quenouille " is something more than a wand, and the possessor of it when " filant" is not "knitting." A goat is not guilty of having a "wicked air," if it has " l'air vif ;"

" maple " are not "marshes." These are but a few instances of the carelessness betrayed In every page, carelessness that should have been avoided, whatever the translator's short- comings in other points. Of course she has been guilty of the common fault of using the English word which looks and sounds most like the French„—as, for instance " bravo " is translated "brave;" "gardion," "guardian;" " salut," "salute." But neither of these malpractices has so spoilt her trans- lation as the errors of meaning which occur sometimes in the same page with really good and graphic sentences not unworthy of the original. In the very first page, the Provençal picture is marred by turning " chones-verts," or ilexes, into "green oaks." Daudet's pines " degringolent," they do not " stretch " to the foot of the hill-side. To be lodged " belle etoile," is not to be lodged "among the stars." The old miller " enrage pour son tat" is exactly the contrary of "always dis- contented with his lot." " Grimpant r pie" is not" climbing ups with a pick." Ladies " qui se font de graudes reverences," do something more than "bow their heads."

Knowing the difficulty of the task, we hoped, as we turned each page of the translation, that fewer misprints of the most glaring sort, and fewer instances of sheer laziness might occur; but M. Daudet's account of his visit to the poet Mistral is, per- haps, the most spoiled of his sketches, and it is in the latter half of the volume. The traveller who meets, "do loin on loin, flue charette de roulier avec sa beche ruisselante, une vieille encapu- chonnee dans sa mante feuille melte, des mules eu tenue de gala, housse de sparterie bleu° et blanche," does not see "once in a great way a peasant's cart rolling by—an old one—covered with a dead-brown awning," or mules with "oil-cloth blankets, blue and white." Mistral himself is not likened by M. Daudet to a Greek "orator," but to a Greek "Vitro," or herdsman. The point of the quotation from Montaigne is lost by translating " j'en ai assez de pas un "by" one is enough ; without one other, that would be enough." It were better to abstain from reading mistranslations of French, and turn to what in English literature best corresponds to French "esprit," if we would really taste the charm of graceful wit, though in truth there is little of our modern literature equivalent in fascination to many a French book such as this of M. Daudet's. We do not often unite the better realism which has been taught by our love of nature with the polished style which is still preserved and honoured in France among scholars who respect their language as a national language should be re- spected.

It is the season when those who can, flock to the Provençal and Ligurian shores. If it be possible that English families should forsake their British modes of thought and standards of judgment, we commend to them these delightful Lettres, charming hints as they are of the indigenous life, of the com- plea materials that contribute to the beauty of the Riviera, and of the couches social and physical, which have been fostered by its nimble and aromatic air, its constant sunshine, and intense-

vitality. M. Daudet will prove to them a useful doctor; he will help the sterner temperaments of the north to unbend. His book will go far to cure the symptoms that are born of self-absorp- tion and despondency, if it persuade its readers to abandon themselves to true Provençal influences, forgetful of pigeon- shooting, gambling, lawn-tennis, and all the weariness of watering-place society.