Ioreessibné OF Pama, "Peo A Panis Baxcony, By Ernest There collected articles—most of which have appeared anonymously in the "Saturday Review"—might [be the text for a dissertation on the differing characters of British and French journalism. M. Dimmet is Frenchman, writing in English, Did we not know this for a, fact, it would' be hard to persuade our: selves that we were not here con cerned with a very skilful transla jon, For though the actual. "mistakes" are few and negligible, there a tore so ineradicably French that now and then T could have seen with no surprise the French words, the English, on the page. In ie of the pieces the writer pays a tribute to the influence of Jules clit indeed enlarge this to declare that all the book is implicit tribute, for from Jules comes Ernest Dimnet, any Well-launched arrow.
The choice of subjects, like the manner, is in the direct succession. Ta the section called "Impressions, where, to my sense, M, Dimnet is west at ease, there are pieces in whose. elfin-melancholy, swift and airy movement, we might think to catch the very" spirit of the Paris howlevard, as Jules Lemaitre was Wont to catch it, "The Chapel of arie Bashkirteeft" is a typical vision "middle," from its opening with a fleer at, the Trocadero and she difficulty of getting there to the reminiscent stroll in Passey Chorehyard and the sudden of that "poor rich byzantine Chapel," where the dead kiyi's Louis XV. armchairs, Forewood table, "candelabra, half-finished picture on her' eas wre assembled long ago that, like Egyptian monarchs, she might surrounded in death by. the familiar things of life.
In half-a-dozen sentences poor Marie is summed ups and here we have the "article de' Paris" in its most essence, 'The hand is like a conjures" hand, tossing the words of praise, appreciation, mockery, m one place to another, till at they all ave gathered' in one phrase, and the performer lets us lok a! that, quite quietly. other woman summed up Detier the eupacity of wealth to produce cosmopolitan charm... The seductive, foreign women who crowd the novels written about 1885 and lend them their poetry all arrived in Paris in her train'
And the achievement doesn't fiveaily suffer from affording one of the examples where we feel that we ave reading a translation, These articles are more attractive than those called political by rea fon of their necessarily more ablding interest; and more persuasive than the literary section in that they leave no room for question of the writer's competence to guide us Tu M, Dimnet's literary criticism there has always. been, or seemed to be, a certain tang of prejudice.
The chapter on "Anatole France and his Boswell" is, of course, une fortunate in the immediate cireumstances; yet I think we all must feel, in reading it, that not alone these circumstances cause the strong, distaste with which it fills us. There fs in this @ shallow, even a spiteful denigration of. ight calling him whenever it will best Jdeprecate him in that character), which will make many wish that it had been omitted from a volume caming, as ie does, when we have all so recently found better things read, and some of us to write, of that' great master. The book would have lost nothing; Mf. Dimnet would have gained at Least in our indulgent, except to one or two moss-grown old Victorians, who seem to exasperate him needlessly. He is, strangely unresponsive to Matthew Amuold, who was surely more signi-cant than, shall we say, Mr.
ichord Lo Galllenne? "But Mr, Turdett's oddest excursion is a diatribe against Charles Darwin, whose "Origin of Species" is dragged in to be trampled upon. regret this vagary on the part of a critic who is usually temperate and brond-minded, and whose book has given me much entertainment-—The Lon= den "Sunday
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.