BOOKS.
TIIE SOUL AND MONEY.* IT is surprising and unsatisfactory that the purveyors of light literature, who have been doing so brisk a business of late, do not try the experiment of issuing translations of foreign fiction on a large and liberal scale. The "English Tauchnitz," as it is called, is the only enterprise of the kind worth mentioning, and hitherto the German novels with which it has made us acquainted have been. too often weak, washy, extravagant specimens. Very little is known. out of Sweden of the homelier order of Swedish literature, and, that little is almost exclusively confined to the French. Only two works of Frederika Bremer's, the H— Family and the Neighbours, ever made an impression upon English readers, and they seem to. have faded out of recollection now. At least we do not see cheap editions of them anywhere ; and yet the stories of this widely- informed but narrow-minded lady, who has been described withy a delightful aptness by Hawthorne as "the spinster aunt of the human race," had a quaint and fragrant charm about them. The truth is, we do not take to the light literature of other countries ;. the unfamiliarity of the framework repels us; social usages which. travel out of our grooves are troublesome ; and the points of view of other peoples, except where political or scientific matters are concerned, do not interest us. How much do we know of Ivan Tourguenef, who is eagerly read in France? or of the Danish novelist, Ericson, or even of Balzac, whose works have never been translated into readable English, though they have been exten- sively plagiarized by English novelists, acts of larceny for the most part undetected ? In the Revue des Deux Mondes of last month there is a French version of a story by Tourgu6nef, "Le Roi Lear de la Steppe," which is full of power, of a kind and intensity new to English readers in its mingling of the grim and the humor.- ous, and its clear, impressive pictures of conditions of existence absolutely unknown to us, and the action of those motives and passions which are everywhere the same. There is nothing in English fiction like this story, except Wuthering Heights, and the resemblance in that case is vague, only the similitude which savage and untrammelled passions bear to each other everywhere, * The Soul and Money. By Jeremias Gotthelt. Translated by Guarteriok Vero, London: Tinsley Brothers. the kind of likeness there is in the howling of the wind, in the sullen sough of the sea. But we know this story only in French, and such translations into English as have been made of the author's larger works are hardly known at all. It would be pleasant to see a change in this respect, an advance in the public taste, a demand for English versions of the best foreign light literature which shoal' induce publishers to employ competent translators. Such an alteration in the present state of things would have an educational as well as an entertaining side. English readers would insensibly learn more of the ways of life, the actual every-day aspect of foreign countries, from such a source, than the literature or even the general experience of travel could teach them. Who has not a clearer notion of Alsace and Lorraine since English people have read the Erckmann- Chatrian books ? On the other hand, we do not think any one who follows closely the current of French thought and intelligence can fail to remark the increased acquaintance with topics distinctively English—with places, names, manners, and customs—which has deprived criticism of one favourite source of censure and quizzing in its estimate of French fiction and French drama. Those delicious blunders of Alfred de Vigny's, which were appreciated here much more keenly than his beauties— hundreds laughed at his Chatterton, for tens who enjoyed his Ging Mars—would be impossible to any French writer now. Not, it seems to us, because French people travel about more than they did, and come frequently to England—we do not think there is a serious difference in that respect—but because all the English novels which are worth anything, as well as a great many which are not worth anything, are translated into French. These translations are admirably done. If one takes the trouble to com- pare an English version of any popular French novel,—say, for instance, Monte Christo —with the French version of Vanity Fair or Martin Chuzzlewit, one sees at once why French people take pleasure in reading our novels in their own language, whereas nothing but the goadings of irresistible curiosity combined with invincible ignorance of French could induce one to read Les Trois Mousqe-taires in the only English form within one's reach. The reason of this is easy to define. French publishers pay decent prices for translations, and employ really instructed persons ; whereas, in England, translation is regarded either as a kind of slop-work of literature for " hands " who must take starvation prices, or as the dilettante resources of amateur litterateurs, with a meagre knowledge of the language they undertake to render into English, and as often as not, with no knowledge at all of the subject.
A translation of a novel by Gotthelf, a celebrated Swiss author, who is hardly more than a name to us in England, is a step in this desirable direction. Gotthelf is well known in France, where the Soul and Money is his most popular book. The present writer is unacquainted with the original work, and is, therefore, not qualified to pronounce upon the accuracy and value of the trans- lation ; but the impression it conveys is like that made sometimes by a portrait, whose original is unknown to the observer, but which convinces him of its authenticity and correctness. Some- thing individual, something characteristic, which he instinctively feels that he should see in the human face, is there before him on the canvas. So does this book live, in its English form, and attract us, by a grave, quaint, thoughtful, and essentially homely style, which, when considered as a whole, is unlike that of any other writer familiar to us, and yet is full of touches reminding us of some others, distinguished for truth and simplicity.
In The Soul and Money we find a picture of provincial life as dramatic, complete, suggestive, and simple as those with which the Romans Pro vinciaux have made us familiar, painted, like theirs, in slight delicate touches, but in which there is no political element. The book cannot be better or more truly described than it has been by the editor, who says in his preface, "Nothing can be more touching or more dramatic than this representation of Bemuse farm-house life, seen by the reader, as it were, in a mirror with a rustic frame, reflecting the human heart,—the same in all times, under all skies, and under all conditions. The plot is little or nothing, serving the author chiefly as material for a psychological study ; but we find in these pages a depth of senti- ment, a delicacy of analysis, a closeness of observation, and a knowledge of the intimate wants of the human soul, which consti- tute it a work of genius, and what is better still, a good and wholesome book." This is not praise evoked by the partiality of a patron for a debutant. It is quite true, and no more than the truth. The book is of a tonic wholesomeness, and of a pure and simple pathos which impresses and remains. There are passages, even pages, which one would like to cut out and paste into one's
pocket-book ; there are bits which one would like to learn by heart. To read it is like breathing mountain air, inhaling the scent of the flowers which we call "common," and which are of such exceeding beauty ; and hearing, without strained listening for them, those sounds of nature which are all prayer and praise. The story is only that of the life and death of a good and holy woman,, who had many sacred sorrows, but one grief, unhallowed, and therefore intolerable ; a division between her and the simple, obstinate, excellent husband whom she had loved all her life, be-. cause they differed in their estimate of money. The matter strangely simple, and yet subtle. Christian is slow, and has his oddities ; Anna is generous and brisk, and has no oddities. The peculiarities of the one retard the accumulation of money, the peculiarities of the other disperse it when it is in hand. Each hats an equal share in the result, which both endure well enough, but neither can bear the other's method of conducing to it. It would
be impossible to convey by any extract the simple earnestness with. which this situation, so seemingly humble and uninteresting, is.
worked into a deeply impressive study of the human heart. The effects of this division, having extended to the children of Christian. and AUDit, are not done away with by the reconciliation brought about through Anna's conscience-stricken repentance, called forth by a scene of which George Eliot might be proud. They are traced with much skill and homely beauty to the end, when Anna, on, the eve of her holy death, removes the last leaven of that evil which she has been given grace and light to trace through all its insidious way, and vindicates the freedom of the soul from the slavery of money. There is no exaltation, no exaggeration, no high-flown sentiment, no strained pietism in this book. There is sound sense, pure morality, spiritual insight, and the calm, lucid, earnest, because perfectly convinced, persuasiveness of one who,. habitually recognizing the atmosphere of faith, hope, and charity as that in which only the soul can live and breathe in health and soundness, regards living according to the standard of God's com- mands, and in constant aspiration to an immortality of holiness, as simply "reasonable service."
In the deeper, more snlemn impression which this book makes, it is not fair to the writer to lose sight of the stray gleams of humour and the happy touches of description which enliven. it, and frequently remind the reader, the latter of Erckmann- Chatrian, the former of George Eliot. Annette and Andrew,. their squabbles, their divided interests, and yet their strong family feeling and partisanship, are like the young people in. L'Histoire dun Paysan and L- And Fritz, but they are of a gentler and less vulgar mould. Here is a passage which might have found a place in Silas Marner or the Mill on the Floss. It relates to the opinion of the village upon the division between Christian and Anna :— " The men pitied Anna. 'One must be very blind,' they said, 'not to see who has always been the real head of affairs there, and doesn't know now how to manage. Nothing more fatal in a large farm than to be behindhand with the work, and it always is so there, and all through Christian. In the housekeeping, which is Anna's affair, everything is brisk and prompt ; the servants are never kept waiting for their meals. Anna does wonders in turning things to account, while Christian will part with nothing, and is such an idiot at business that a child could cheat him. It's not to be wondered at that Anna should give him her mind sometimes; it would be a happy thing for many of us if all wives were like her." What a race men are,' exclaimed one of the women there- upon. One has only to go wrong, and the men are all on our side. It is quite a temptation to try how they would bear with it in their owe wives ; I fancy they would soon change their key ! Everything pleases them but what they find at home, and they're never content with us, whatever we may do."
The Soul and Money is so quiet a story, so domestic, and evidently so completely the outcome of a thoroughly established confidence be- tween the author and his countrymen, that localities and customs are simply assumed, as they naturally would be, in the case of a small and familiar audience. We have no right to complain that the author does not write for us, but for them, and though the absence of description in certain places gives the book a topo- graphical haziness to the foreign reader, it is full of the glow, the breeziness, the hardihood of a mountain land.
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