THE JOURNAL OF THE DE GONCOITRTS.* Tag task of condensing

the nine volumes of the Journal des Goncourt into one small book, and of making it readable mid

amusing, must have presented many difficulties in execution. Mr. West courageously set himself to pick out and disoa everything that might bore or shock the English readers leer

whom his translation is intended. " Much of the original journal] is uninteresting. . . . A good deal frankly seam. dalons. . . . A good deal is merely horrible," he informs us in the introduction. 'The mass of material that remained after these deductions was still. however, very large, and from eft this editor has, wisely, chosen "the passages of the greatest literary interest," while making " copious extracts from the diary of the siege and the Commune," and so arranging Cho entries that " they fill the place of an autobiography." Con- temporary gossip about the great men and events of the past is acceptable to most people, and when it is written, as this, ia, with such perfection of literary accomplishment that translation can only dim but• not obliterate its charm, it is indeed a pleaseze and a refreshment. And if a desire to renew acquaintance with the works of the French masters of the nineteenth century arises from the reading of this book, an added eatisfaction will be obtained from it. Of Daudet and his family we got attractive glimpses :-

" December, 1883.—My real home during the last month of the year has been the dining-room and the little study ef Daudet. There I find in the husband a man who can understand my thought prompt/et and with sympathy ; in the wife, a tender respect for the old rites; in both, a calm, continued friendship with no tips and downs of affection."

Writing in 1884 of M. Viaud, " the author of the masterpiece entitled Le Mariage de Loti," de Goncourt says : " Daudet asked him if he came of a family of sailors, and he replied With

the utmost simplicity, ' Yes, I had an uncle who was eaten on the raft of the 31 Num.' " He was much attracted by Mistral, of whom he says : " He has a fine forehead, the limpid eyes of a child, and something good, smiling, calm, caused by a life' its

the open air of the South, with good wine and the easy production of songs and troubadour poetry." De Goncourt seems rarely to have left Paris and its neighbourhood, though he could enjoy a holiday excursion, and gives us an entertaining account of a visit to Avignon and Arles. This is how he sums up` his experiences :- " October 8th, 1885.—This South with its houses and closed shutteni, its rooms which are always dark to keep away the flies. its keg- plicably cloistral interiors, and its interminable cypresses along the roads, is sad, and often enough brings ideas of death. And when the sun is not shining, and in its absence the mistral irritates your nerves, oh, then . . ! "

The literary partnership of the Goncourt brothers and the love which bound them together are mirrored in the journal.

While he lived Jules, the younger, held the rea, and wrote, Edmond. says, " from the dictation of us both." After Jule-s's death, " regarding our literary work as at an end, I resolved

to let the journal finish with the last lines traced by his hand on January 20th, 1870." But a man such as Edmond do Goncourt could not live without writing, and in continuing the journal he found solace for his grief. Then came the war and the siege of Paris. The effect of the national misery on the already stricken man is vividly drawn for us. The parallels and the divergences between our war and that of 1870 are curiously interesting. If the people of Antwerp now lament the loss of their beautiful avenues, as did the Parisian the

destruction of his beloved trees in the Bois the Boulogne,: the literary observers of Paris in August, 1914, have written some- thing very different from this entry of August 22nd in 187.9:

"Everybody on the Boulevards—men and women—seems 4e be asking a question of everybody else, turning round to listen to whoever is speaking, restless, anxious, frightened." The attitude of mental detachment which characterized de Goncourt hardly altered even in those months of strain and horror ; but his picture of the events of the siege and of the Commune in extraordinarily moving. These notes force us to think of the

bodily as well as the spiritual suffering that is the lot of eve. the most sheltered of people in an invaded country. We non- combatant islanders must needs feel a certain humiliation

when we look on our well-ordered lives, for, however grea4 our anguish, we do not see our children sicken of hunger. Our

• The Journal of the De Gerwourle : Pages from a Great Diary ; May EXtrelfat from the " Journal des Goncourt." Edited, with an Introduction, by Julius Weal, tendon : T. Nelson and Sons.

soMiers, too, are spared the intolerable pain of leaving their wimen in perhaps doubtful safety.

'We have left ourselves but little space in which to speak otimany amusing and interesting episodes and stories—the keen competition among men of letters, the disputes and the reconciliations, and all the varied interest of theatre and studio, which the reader will find himself enjoying, and entering into with appreciation. As for the translation, we will only say that we were able to read it without the feeling of acute im- pstience that translations often give us ; but why does Mr. West sometimes use French words instead of English ones ? For instance, he writes " college " for " school," and " deception " for " disappointment." The book is illustrated by portraits of the authors and some of their friends, but lacks an index.