PORT TARASCON.*
Mn. HENRY JAMES, in the preface to his clever translation of Port Taraseon, places this last p.art of M. Daudet's trilogy on a level with the two others, Tartarin de Taraseon and Tartarin sur les Alpes. He finds the character of Tartarin perfectly consistent throughout, and describes the whole tara8conna4e as "perfect art," speaking of it as "a performance so accom- plished, so light and bright and irresistible." In praise such as this there is a great deal of truth. Few books published of late years are so original, so entirely laughable and amusing, as these three : yet can a caricature be rightly described as "perfect art" P—and are we alone in the impression that the Tartarin of Port Tairascon is not quite the same sort of hero an in the two earlier books ? He has certainly a. good deal in common with the Tartarin of the Alps, whose heroism displays itself after he finds out that Bompard has deceived him, and that crevasses are really dangerous ; but we do not see so much likeness to the Tartarin of the baobab and the camel, whose motives in going to hunt lions are not heroic, and in whose nature, if Don Quixote and Sancho Panza share it between them, Sancho and self-preservation certainly dominate. Sancho, it seems to us, has not much influence on the brave and dignified Governor Tartarin, who from a high sense of honour refuses to leave the ill-fated island. Possibly the rage and fury of the real Taraseonnais may have had something to do with the increased heroism of the hero of their city, in, these last adventures of his. This is no more than might be expected from so sympa- thetic a genius as M. Daudet. He tells us himself de- lightfully, in Trente Ans de Paris, how in 1878, the year of the Exhibition, there appeared in Paris "une formidable paire de moustaches venues en train de plaisir," but bent on stern business, no less, than finding out "cc Daudet," who had caricatured Tarascon, and settling the little city's account * l'ort Torascen: the La,L Adventores of the lilustrious Tartarin. By Alphonee
Daudet. Translated
oo, by lionry IMMO% Illtatrated. LondOn : Sampson Low an
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with him. " Tremblez :" the real Tartanin was supposed. to say: "le vieux lion a encore bee et angles !" But, seriously, the people of the real Tarascon were in a great rage, and talked of ducking their caricaturist in the RhOne, if he came that way. Of late years, we are told, mollified by his ex- planations, and "weighing the shame against the glory," they have somewhat changed their tone. And no one can doubt M. Daudet's real love for the country and the people who have inspired him with so many pathetic, as well as humorous pictures. He laughs at the South and its ex- travagances, as an elder brother who has seen the world, and has always tenderness in the background for his Tarasconnais, whose great fault is their lively imagination. If he says in one place—putting it, indeed, into the mouth of an English- man,—" En somme, le type tarasconnais, c'est le Francais grossi, exag6r6, comme vu dans tine boule de jardin," he has a kind word later on : "A part ca, mes enfants, jolie race, In race tarasconnaise, et sans elle is France depuis longtemps serait morto de p6dantisme et d'ennui." The last sentence runs in English thus : "But except for that, my children, we are not so bad ; it's a nice little race, without which, long ago, our poor old France would have died of pedantry and ennui." No one, we may venture to say, could translate Tartarin better than Mr. Henry James : therefore this little extract is a tolerably good instance of the futility of translations in general, and the absolute impossibility of uniting English words and French character. We must also observe thet it seems to us rather curious taste to translate such untrans- latable words as " PecaIre " and " Outré " by the English word " Cracky !" " Cracky ! as they say down there." We shoeld have thought that, without much offence to the English public, and in spite of all its horror of a French word, these native ex- clamations of Tarascon might have been left as they were. A more serious remark is that the translator strains the quaint- ness, the Southern tone and colour, of the Piro Bataillet'e parable-sermon till some of its expressions border too nearly on irreverence. This fault is the more grave that it might have been so easily avoided,
To return for a moment to the book itself, and its level as a work of art. To us it seems inferior to the two other books, because the strain of extravagant fancy which runs through them all is here forced into extremes of simple absurdity. Tartarin's adventures were captivating, were even credible, to an imaginative mind, as long as he had them to himself; but Tartarin loses a certain distinction, and becomes merely a, leader amongst lunatics, when the whole town of Tara soon flocks on board ship, and follows him to that island in the South Seas from which its return is the most miraculous part of the business. We think that Tartarin-Sancho would have had something to say to this enterprise, on behalf of his com- munity, as well as of himself (see p. 35 of Tartarin de Tarascon) :— " Tortarin-Quichotto, trbs exalt6 Couvre-toi de gloire, Tartarin.
Tariarin-Sancho, tri\s came : Tartarin, couvre-toi de flanelle." Of course we do not for a mOment attempt anything so futile and. so stupid as to criticise a mirage tarasconnais by any laws of reason. We only say that because of its greater extrava- gance, we do not quite agree with Mr. Henry James in placing Port Taraseon, original and delightful as it is, quite on the artistic level of the other two parts, especially of the first part, of the trilogy.
In size and appearance, except its solid binding, the English Port Taraseon is uniform with M. Dentu's splendid edition du Figaro in the 'Collection (77( 'name. The illustrations, by popular artists, are the so u 0, Ind exceedingly clever, though they seem to have suffered to a certain extent in reproduction. The portrait of M. Daudet, as frontispiece, is a special and very attractive feature of the English edition.
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