LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8477, 8 May 1893, Page 3

LITERARY GOSSIP.

Are the adventures of "Paul and Virginia " read any longer Iα England V aska the Daily News. There was a time, wlthta the memory even of the middle aged, when a copy of the book in brovrn call, with illustrations, was to be found wherever books were to be fou nd at all. With " The Scottish Worthies" and "The Border Tales" it chared the ehclf of the Caledonian cottage. Perßonanowmature,in a childhood eager for all printed matter, took it up, did not care for it, and laid 16 down again. Yet thin was the book which Napoleon kept as carefully by hie bedside Aβ Alexander kept the Homer of the Casket, the text edited by Aristotle. Bernardin de St. Pierre lived by this book alone—bis optimistic " Studies of Nature,", the most essentially pre Darwinian of philosophies, sleep undisturbed. " Paul and Virginia " was but a break, a breathing place, in tho composition of philosophical reflections, as "Manon Lescaut" was only an episode in Prevost's "Memoirs of a Man of Quality." Tho rest) of that vast and wandering romance is forgotten, but " Manon " lives, perhaps with more vitality than "Paul and Virginia." Thus, occasionally an author becomes fmrnortal by a kind of accident, like Perrault by his "Fairy Tales," the least considered of his work* no doubt by himself and hie periwigged contemporaries. Monsieur Arvode BarlUe has written the life of the author of "Paul and Virginia" in Monsieur JueeeranHV series of " French Men of Lettera," and Mr Fisher TJnwin has published a translation by Mr J. E. Gordon, with a short Introduction by Mr Birrell. The biography gives a curious and amusing picture of France before eentimeno had blossomed into the red flower of Revolution. " Paul and Virginia " is as sentimental aa a book can be, and we are no longer sentimental in that particular way. If we are not more Innocent, we are, like Paul as he grew up, a good deal less ignorant, Wβ do not think that the "natural" or uncivilised life is fertile in all the virtues and barren of all the vices, which only come of education and artificiality. The natural life has virtues indeed, excellent virtues, but among them chastity, a pure and tender affection, is conspicuously absent. We know how Captain Cook found things in Otaheite, as described in the glowing lines of the Anti-Jacobin. EvenintheSouth Sea Islands, where every prospect pleases, where the climate Iβ excellent, where there is plenty to' eat, cannibalism is at once fashionable and religious; while the Arol societies practise every kind of profligacy and kill children in the intervale of other abominations. "Observe ye Filthy Devices of ye Heathens," exclaims tho Elizabethan translator of Herodotus on hie margin opposite "ye filthy devices"" of Egypt, described In English of antiquated plainness. The inventions of Zulus and Australians bring a blush even to the cheek of tho anthropologist, aa hardened as that of a colonel of dragoons, and ho describes what be Is too conscientious to omit in very queer anthropological Latin* Iα fact, " a stale of nature is not what a vain people, led by J. J. Rousseau, cupI posed, and we can no longer weep freely ' over the delights of our ancestors. Meserx Macmillan have ju*t issued tho first volume of "English Prose S»lee- ! tions," a work which its to do for English prose what the well-known volumes edited for the same firm by Mr Humphry Ward did for English vertio. As in that case, there will be Critical Introductions to the 1 various authors sampled, written specially by various living critics, and there will be a General Introduction to each period. The whole is under the editorship of Mr Henry Cralk. The volumes cant 7e 6d 1 each. The present volume goes from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. ! Messrs Macmillan and Company wil publish jehortly a new volume of stories by Mr Rudyard Kipling, to bo entitled. *' Mao j lutentious."