LITERARY ANODYNES.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIB,As the editor who is responsible for introducing, in the pages of the Universal Review, the " L'Immorter of M. Daudet to the English public, and who, moreover, intends very shortly to publish it in a completed form, will you allow me to protest in the strongest way against the implied characterisation of the book in the Spectator of Saturday last* (September 22nd) as an "analysis of filth, brutality, and realism "? A book to which most of the chief journals of England, as well as France, have devoted many columns of criticism and eulogy might well have hoped to escape such an unjust condemnation, even from its most bitter opponent; but that the Spectator should brand this scathing critique upon the French Academy in words which would be strong if applied to M. Zola, appears to me to be so entirely wonderful, that I can only imagine that your critic has written " L'Immortel " when he meant to have written " La Terre." However this may be, you will, I trust, permit me to assure your readers that, though there may be " analysis " in this latest work of M. Daudet's, there is neither filth nor brutality therein ; and if there be "realism," it is
• Bee article entitled "Literary Anolynea." only of that kind which all works of fiction possess which endeavour to give a faithful picture of the epoch to which their story relates.
This is not a matter of opinion, but one of absolute fact, which can be proved to demonstration from the book itself.—
Editor, Universal Review.
[There is brutality enough, surely.—ED. Spectator.]
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