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Essays in Little By: Andrew Lang (1844-1912) |
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by
ANDREW LANG. WITH PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR . LONDON:
HENRY AND CO., BOUVERIE STREET, E.C.
1891. Printed by Hazell , Watson , & Vincy , Ld. , London and Aylesbury . CONTENTS. Preface
Alexandre Dumas
Mr. Stevenson's works
Thomas Haynes Bayly
Theodore de Banville
Homer and the Study of Greek
The Last Fashionable Novel
Thackeray
Dickens
Adventures of Buccaneers
The Sagas
Charles Kingsley
Charles Lever: His books, adventures and misfortunes
The poems of Sir Walter Scott
John Bunyan
To a Young Journalist
Mr. Kipling's stories {Portrait of Andrew Lang: p0.jpg}
PREFACE
Of the following essays, five are new, and were written for this volume.
They are the paper on Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the "Letter to a Young
Journalist," the study of Mr. Kipling, the note on Homer, and "The Last
Fashionable Novel." The article on the author of "Oh, no! we never
mention Her," appeared in the New York Sun , and was suggested by Mr.
Dana, the editor of that journal. The papers on Thackeray and Dickens
were published in Good Words , that on Dumas appeared in Scribner's
Magazine , that on M. Theodore de Banville in The New Quarterly Review .
The other essays were originally written for a newspaper "Syndicate."
They have been re cast, augmented, and, to a great extent, re written. A. L.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
Alexandre Dumas is a writer, and his life is a topic, of which his
devotees never weary. Indeed, one lifetime is not long enough wherein to
tire of them. The long days and years of Hilpa and Shalum, in
Addison the antediluvian age, when a picnic lasted for half a century
and a courtship for two hundred years, might have sufficed for an
exhaustive study of Dumas. No such study have I to offer, in the brief
seasons of our perishable days. I own that I have not read, and do not,
in the circumstances, expect to read, all of Dumas, nor even the greater
part of his thousand volumes. We only dip a cup in that sparkling
spring, and drink, and go on, we cannot hope to exhaust the fountain,
nor to carry away with us the well itself. It is but a word of gratitude
and delight that we can say to the heroic and indomitable master, only an
ave of friendship that we can call across the bourne to the shade of
the Porthos of fiction. That his works (his best works) should be even
still more widely circulated than they are; that the young should read
them, and learn frankness, kindness, generosity should esteem the tender
heart, and the gay, invincible wit; that the old should read them again,
and find forgetfulness of trouble, and taste the anodyne of dreams, that
is what we desire. Dumas said of himself ("Memoires," v. 13) that when he was young he tried
several times to read forbidden books books that are sold sous le
manteau . But he never got farther than the tenth page, in the "scrofulous French novel
On gray paper with blunt type;" he never made his way so far as "the woful sixteenth print." "I had, thank God, a natural sentiment of delicacy; and thus, out of my
six hundred volumes (in 1852) there are not four which the most
scrupulous mother may not give to her daughter." Much later, in 1864,
when the Censure threatened one of his plays, he wrote to the Emperor:
"Of my twelve hundred volumes there is not one which a girl in our most
modest quarter, the Faubourg Saint Germain, may not be allowed to read."
The mothers of the Faubourg, and mothers in general, may not take Dumas
exactly at his word. There is a passage, for example, in the story of
Miladi ("Les Trois Mousquetaires") which a parent or guardian may well
think undesirable reading for youth. But compare it with the original
passage in the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan! It has passed through a medium,
as Dumas himself declared, of natural delicacy and good taste. His
enormous popularity, the widest in the world of letters, owes absolutely
nothing to prurience or curiosity. The air which he breathes is a
healthy air, is the open air; and that by his own choice, for he had
every temptation to seek another kind of vogue, and every opportunity... Continue reading book >>
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