Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/59

 1893.] aspirants. A record of failure is often more helpful than a record of triumphant achievement, and Miss French, in her record, gives abundant evidence that she too is human, and no exception to the maxim, humanum errare est. In vivacious and unconventional language, she tells the reader of her early tribulations, of the pitfalls upon which stumbled her unwary feet, and of the methods and formulæ in which she finally found salvation. Miss French's book is good, first, to read, and second, to keep at hand for practical guidance in all the stages of photographic work. It is entitled "An Adventure in Photography " (Scribner).

In a series of essays and sketches reprinted under the collective title, “Picture and Text” (Harper), Mr. Henry James chats appreciatively of the admirable group of artists — Messrs. Abbey, Parsons, Millet, Boughton, Reinhart, Sargent, etc. — best known to many of us through the medium of “Harper's Magazine.” The excellence, in point of illustration, of American magazines is justly a matter of national pride — one of the shining exceptions to which we refer the carping foreigner; and it is well to learn something of leading personality and methods of the illustrators. Touching the illustration of books and magazines in general, the author observes that it “may be said to have been born in our time, so far as variety and abundance are the signs of it; or born, at any rate, the comprehensive, ingenious, sympathetic spirit in which we conceive and practise it. If the centuries are ever arraigned at some bar of justice to answer in regard to what they have given, of good or of bad, to humanity, our interesting age (which certainly is not open to the charge of having stood with its hands in its pockets) might perhaps do worse than put forth the plea of having contributed a fresh interest in ‘black and white.’” The little book, which contains several illustrations, is a companion volume in the “Black and White Series” to Mr. Curtis's “From the Easy Chair,” Mr. Warner's “As We Were Saying,” etc. Of Mr. James's quality as an essayist we need not speak. Even those who do not care for him must admit his painstaking fidelity to his models; and, at the worst, he may serve to sharpen the reader's appetite for a bit of downright Anglo-Saxon.

Mr. Harold Littledale's “Essays on Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King” (Macmillan) are based upon lectures written for students in India. It was certainly worth while to offer the book in its present form to English and American students. Like other books prepared for the use of Indian undergraduates, this volume explains many things that any good dictionary could explain, but on the other hand it interprets many phases of the Idylls that no reference-book alludes to. There are chapters on the sources of the Arthurian story, on its growth from Malory to Tennyson, and on personages and localities spoken of in the modern epic. Then follow studies of each Idyll, and annotations on particular words and obscure points. The work is by no means exhaustive, but the material is carefully selected and well arranged. There is a constant comparison of Tennyson with Malory and the Mabinogion, and many interesting points of departure are suggested to the reader. The interpretation of the allegorical bearing of the Idylls is sensible and appreciative, and the treatment of the rise of the legend, although brief, is in the main accurate. Rather strangely, however, Mr. Littledale takes no account of such an authoritative work as Professor Rhy's “Arthurian Legend.” The work can readily be used as a handbook in a Tennyson class.

“Under Cotton Canvas” (Cupples) is a lively account, with much incidental “yarn-spinning,” of a sailing- voyage from New York to Cape Town, thence, over two hundred degrees of longitude, across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, to the coast of Chili, and from Chili to the Falkland Islands. The author, Captain J. H. Potter, of the ship “Onward,” observes in his Preface: “While Cooper, Marryatt, and others, have let the world know all about sailing before the day of steam, I know of no writer having yet come to the front to give anywhere near the correct idea of how it is with us, the ‘wind-jammers,’ since the introduction into our profession of that powerful element. This work was accordingly begun with the sole view of contributing towards the supply of that deficiency.” A “wind-jammer,” it may be said parenthetically, is a sailing-vessel, as contradistinguished from a steamer. The story is told, as it should be told, for the most part, in an offhand, breezy, sailor-like fashion, with plenty of incident, humorous as well as stirring. But oddly enough there is a tendency here and there to “work in,” at all hazards, a tempting literary allusion or citation — which results once or twice, where the connection is remote, in the Captain's getting his syntactical sails “all a-back and shaking,” and narrowly escaping shipwreck.

Mallet's “The French Revolution” (Scribner), written by a lecturer on the staff of the Oxford University Extension for the “University Extension Manuals” series, may be thoroughly commended. It is the best summary of the Revolution yet published, and is a large improvement on the sketch by O'Connor Morris, also published by Messrs. Scribner. The author has availed himself of all the recent literature of his subject down to Mr. Morse Stephens, and has not only summarized but has unified these contributions. His first two chapters clearly introduce the Revolution through its social causes, and he is very successful in showing why the Constitutional party failed, why the Jacobin party followed, and why the latter also failed. He ends his narrative