Men have spent their lives in the study of the French and English, and have given us Voltaire, Hugo and all other works of French classics, perfect in sentiment and construction as the originals are. Macaulay was a great linguist, but he wrote no better than Shakespeare, and Burns wrote perfect English, though virtually uneducated. Good writing is a matter of genius and heart; reading is application and judgment.
I am of the opinion that Wilbur's English translation of "Les Miserables" is better than Hugo's original, as a literary masterpiece.
What a grand novel it is! What characters, Jean Valjean and Javert!
Question. Which in your opinion is the greatest English novel?
Answer. I think the greatest novel ever written in English is "A Tale of Two Cities," by Dickens. It is full of philosophy; its incidents are dramatically grouped. Sidney Carton, the hero, is a marvelous creation and a marvelous character. Lucie Manette is as delicate as the perfume of wild violets, and cell 105, North Tower, and scenes enacted there, almost touch the region occupied by "Lear." There, too, Mme. Defarge is the impersonation of the French Revolution, and the nobleman of the chateau with his fine features changed to stone, and the messenger at Tellson's Bank gnawing the rust from his nails; all there are the creations of genius, and these children of fiction will live as long as Imagination spreads her many-colored wings in the mind of man.
Question. What do you think of Pope?
Answer. Pope! Alexander Pope, the word-carpenter, a mechanical poet, or stay—rather a "digital poet;" that fits him best—one of those fellows who counts his fingers to see that his verse is in perfect rhythm. His "Essay on Man" strikes me as being particularly defective. For instance:
"All discord, harmony not understood,
All partial evil, universal good,"
from the first epistle of his "Essay on Man." Anything that is evil cannot by any means be good, and anything partial cannot be universal.
We see in libraries ponderous tomes labeled "Burke's Speeches." No person ever seems to read them, but he is now regarded as being in his day a great speaker, because now no one has pluck enough to read his speeches. Why, for thirty years Burke was known in Parliament as the "Dinner Bell"—whenever he rose to speak, everybody went to dinner.