The French Humorists from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century.
By Walter Besant, M.A.
Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Had Mr. Besant given us definitions of "humor" and "humorist," we might possibly not have been satisfied with them, but they would at least have enabled us to understand what sense he attaches to the words, and what principle determined him in selecting the writers embraced in his category. In the first page of his book he speaks of humor as "a branch" of satire; in the second he identifies French satire as the "esprit gaulois;" in the third he tells us that "the French type for satire and humor has preserved one uniform character from generation to generation;" and in his last page he claims superiority for the French over the English humorists, on the ground that "Rabelais has a finer wit than Swift," that "we have no political satire so good as the Satyre Mènipée," "no English humor comparable for a moment with that of the fabliaux," "no letter-writer like Voiture," "no teller of tales like La Fontaine," and "no chansonnier like Béranger." Now, it is evident that this is a comparison not of French and English humorists, but of certain classes of writers in the two languages in reference to their manifestation of humor. We have no fabulist like La Fontaine, no song-writer equal to Béranger; but then we do not think of citing our fables and songs as the highest examples of English humor. It would be easy to array a list of names as a set-off against that of Mr. Besant. But this is needless. Humor, in the sense in which the word is commonly understood, may almost be said to be a distinctive quality of English literature, which is pervaded by it in a far greater degree than that of any other people. It is a leading trait in all the great English novelists, from Fielding to Thackeray and George Eliot, without excepting Richardson, in whom it is least conspicuous; it is the chief attribute of our finest essayists, from Addison to Charles Lamb; it is harmoniously blended with the fresh and simple pathos of Chaucer and with the passionate moodiness of Carlyle: it holds equal sway with the tragic element in the world created by Shakespeare. When Mr. Besant says that "there is no English humor comparable for a moment with that of the fabliaux," we are forced to suppose either that he uses the word "humor" in some unexplained and inexplicable sense, or that he leaves out of the account what would generally be considered the greatest of humorous productions. The puzzle increases when we find him omitting all mention of Le Sage, while excusing himself for the omission, from lack of space, of Rousseau! A list of humorous works which should exclude Gil Blas to make room for Émile or Le Contrat Social, might itself, one would think, act as a provocative on the esprit gaulois.

These mysteries are not the only ones in Mr. Besant's volume to which we have to confess our inability to discover a key. In closing his remarks on Montaigne he touches with undissembled irony the question whether he was a Christian, and, after contrasting the tone and sentiments of the Essais with those of the Gospels, bids us "remember that we are not in the nineteenth century, but in the sixteenth, that Montaigne died in the act of adoration, and cease to ask whether the man was a Christian;" adding, "Christian? There was no better Christian than Montaigne in all his century." It appears, therefore, that the sixteenth century, instead of being, as we had supposed, one in which the Reformation had brought with it a revival of religious earnestness and a reaction against religious formalism, and in which on the battle-field, in the dungeon and at the stake, as well as through voluntary exile and the relinquishment of property, thousands in every country testified to the fervor and sincerity of their religious convictions, was in truth, like the eighteenth century, one in which a prevailing skepticism or indifference paid to dead but not yet dethroned creeds its light homage of affected "adoration." Mr. Besant informs us that "to the men of culture the rival parties were but two political sides." How many men of culture could be cited in support of this assertion? We grant him Montaigne, but it was precisely because the case of Montaigne was an exceptional one in the age of Erasmus and More, of Calvin and Coligny, that the question in regard to him has not seemed altogether idle.

It appears from another passage that Mr. Besant has an easy method of arriving at a judgment in regard to the character or general aspect of an historical epoch. From the details in regard to food, dress and furniture which he finds in the works of Eustache Deschamps, a satirical poet of the fourteenth century, he infers that the bourgeois life of that period was "comfortable, abundant and cheery." "History," he says, "paints this as the worst and most disastrous period that Europe had ever seen; yet here, in the most real poet of the century, we see how life, as a whole, went on in the usual way. For when a great pestilence strikes a country, it slays its thousands and goes away. Time quickly heals the wounds of grief, and the world goes on as before. Then come the English to sack and destroy. Nature heals their wounds, too, by the recurring seasons, and the world goes on as before. I am inclined to think that life, on the whole, was generally pleasant for a well-to-do Frenchman of the period." Mr. Besant, it will be seen, concedes that evils are evils while they last, that war and pestilence are not pleasant things to the victims, and that the comfortable and cheery life of the fourteenth century suffered some interruptions from these causes. But then it was still, he insists, an agreeable life "on the whole," since "the recurring seasons" healed the wounds and the grief, and left the survivors to enjoy existence "in the usual way." This, it must be owned, is a very comfortable and cheery philosophy—for those who preach it. We do not see that they need ever complain of "bad times," since they can always be sure that the recurring seasons will bring alleviation to the survivors. It may also be admitted that, as there is no age in which the recurring seasons do not bring relief, so there has been none when war and pestilence and similar evils did not interrupt the usual course of life. There is, however, this difference, that in some ages these evils last longer than in others, the wounds are deeper, the victims more numerous, the intermissions less frequent, the relief tardier, the survivors fewer. Such an age in France was the period of the English invasions, comprising a great portion of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. That life was then, "on the whole," anything but comfortable and cheery is attested by records and evidence of all kinds, against which the mention of weddings and christenings, of gold-embroidered mantles and robes of silk, in the pages of a court poet will, we apprehend, count for very little, especially as the sufferers do not appear to have solaced themselves with reflections on the sure effects of the recurring seasons. Deschamps himself was unable, it seems, to get his pension paid; and if he died, as Mr. Besant tells us, about 1409, the chances, we think, are that however he may have denounced luxury as the "crying evil" of his time, his death was the result of starvation.

Mr. Besant, it will be perceived, is one of those writers who indulge in haphazard assertions without troubling their heads with the facts that conflict with them. A glaring instance of his tendency to exaggeration and wild speculation will be found in his estimate of Rabelais, whom he first vaunts as "a great moral teacher," "a teacher the like of whom Europe had not yet seen," and then denounces as having "destroyed effectually, perhaps for centuries yet to come, earnestness in France," declaring that "no writer who ever lived has inflicted such lasting injury on his country," and that "it would have been better for France if his book, tied to a millstone, had been hurled into the sea." These opinions are contradictory of each other, since it is impossible that a writer who so perverted men's minds should also have been, in any proper sense of the term, a great moral teacher; they are inconsistent with Mr. Besant's account of the "unbroken lines of writers," of whom Rabelais was one, but not the first, all having the same characteristics, all "irreverent," having "no strong convictions," "like children for mockery, mischief and lightness of heart;" and finally, they are so improbable in themselves, and so unsusceptible of proof, that, uttered as they are with the solemnity of communications from an unseen world, they produce much the same impression on us as the disclosures with which Mr. Robert Dale Owen is favored by his "materialized" visitants.

We might cite other examples to prove that Mr. Besant is not a safe guide either in his general speculations or in his critical judgments. He is an agreeable narrator, showing a close familiarity with the topics he handles, and an enthusiasm which, if it sometimes degenerates into mere fume, adds on the whole to the liveliness of his writing. His translations in verse are remarkable for their ease and finish. The book may be read with pleasure, but not, we fear, with equal profit. The chapters that deal with the least known works and writers are the most satisfactory. On Montaigne and Molière Mr. Besant has nothing to say which is likely to incite the reader to a fresh study of their works, which ought to be the effect of every fresh discourse on a great author.

Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland A.D. 1803.
By Dorothy Wordsworth.
Edited by J.C. Shairp, LL.D.
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The special charm of this book lies in the fact that it is not a book—that there was no thought in the writer's mind of printer's ink, no vision of publicity or fame, no solicitude to propitiate critics or win the sympathy of the "gentle reader." Or one might say it was a book of the primitive kind, written on the bark of trees by some shy dryad, unconcious translator into speech of the rustlings and whisperings of the woodland. It is, as the editor observes, an "effortless narrative," with "no attempt at fine or sensational writing, ... at that modern artifice which they call word-painting," but recording with "vivid exactness" what was seen and felt by the writer and her companions on a journey through regions then little frequented by tourists and unsmirched by the eloquence of guide-books. That the travelers were William and Dorothy Wordsworth and (for a part of the way) S.T. Coleridge, that scenes and incidents here first sketched in the sister's sober prose were afterward memorialized and moralized in the brother's verse, and that many of the spots described were about to become famous with and through Scott—a meeting with whom formed the fitting close to the tour,—these are circumstances that of course invest the journal with a deeper interest and have called wider attention to its unobtrusive beauty. But its chief attractiveness lies in the Doric simplicity not only of the style but of the matter. An outlandish Irish car was the conveyance; the appearance of the party was not such as to attract notice unless by the quaintness of their garb or their awkward management of the horse, "now gibbing and backing over a bank, now reduced to a walk, with one of the poets leading him by the head;" and they themselves were in search of nothing more notable than such wayside objects as might serve to feed contemplation. On one occasion, having turned aside to visit the duke of Hamilton's picture-gallery, they were told by the porter, after he had scanned them over, that they ought not to have come to the front door, and were directed to an obscure entrance at the corner of the house, where they seated themselves humbly on a bench while waiting for admittance, which was finally refused. They were mortified, but had a deeper pang in the grounds around Bothwell Castle, for here they were "hurt to see that flower-borders had taken place of the natural overgrowings of the ruins, the scattered stones and wild plants." Sometimes at an inn they were made to perceive how little consideration they were entitled to by being lodged in inferior rooms while better ones were vacant; but to compensate for this, in the wilder parts of the country they were greeted with the hospitality which their mere condition as strangers was still sufficient to call forth. The descriptions given of the people have at least an equal interest with those of the scenery. We have a succession of pictures in which, as Principal Shairp remarks, "man is seen against a great background of Nature and solitude." The book is one not to be read and laid away, but to be kept near at hand, and made a frequent companion and familiar friend.

Books Received.

Sophisms of Protection.
By the late M. Frédéric Bastiat.
Translated from the Paris edition of 1863,
with Preface by Horace White.
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Select Notes on the International Sabbath School Lessons for 1875.
By a New England Pastor.
Boston: Henry Hoyt.
Notes in England and Italy.
By Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Illustrated Edition.
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
William Prince of Orange; or, The King and his Hostage.
By Rev. T.M. Merriman, A.M.
Boston: Henry Hoyt.
Report of the Commissioner of Education for the year 1873.
Washington: Government Printing Office.
Among the Trees.
By William Cullen Bryant.
Illustrated.
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Early English History.
By John P. Yeatman.
London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Poems.
By Stuart Sterne.
(Published for the Author.)
New York: F.B. Patterson.
The Frozen Deep.
By Wilkie Collins.
Boston: William F. Gill & Co.
A Lecture on the Protestant Faith.
By Dwight H. Olmstead.
New York.