PREFACES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1085, 25 March 1911, Page 9

PREFACES.

An American journalist (an English writer says) who has been discussing reviewing, " and confessing to the wholo fraternity of reviewers their many and grievous sins, declares that from timo to timo he chances upon reviews based entirely upon the commendatory note's of publishers. Such notes are not weil known to the public. They are not well known even to many reviewers, having a way of being intercepted in their journey; but tliev appear in substance in these paragraphs of "literary notes" or "book notes" which in some quarters predict the nativity of books and the scope of each. Being written by publishers who arc too good merchants to decry their own wares, they aro appreciative, and any review based on them tends to be unduly eulogistic. Nowone cannot go so far as the writer in question, but no one who is in tho way of reading books and comparing reviews of them with his own conclusions can but judge that a review is occasionally based on tho author's preface. 'IJhe preface is written after the book, and often embodies the author's survey of his whole field and an indication where ho has innovated upon his predecessors. And as a rule such intimations aro a safe guide to a reviewer where to look for originality; but there are exceptions. There aro cases where a volumo which' has been hastily vamped up sets forth its claim to he a work of solid erudition, and if only the claim is made with sufficient boldness it is astonishing to what extent reviewers will.prefer the author's assertions to the dictates of their own judgment. The whole question of the preface in an interesting one. It may do more than set forth the author's purpose. In tho easo of Hugo's "Cromwell," tho preface is the manifesto _ of - a school. So 'in a lfeser degree is that to D'Anminzio's "Trionfo delta Morte," and so in a lesser degreo still is Oautier's to "Mademoiselle de -Manpin." Gnutier,' indeed, is often brilliant in- his preface, and from that mentioned and the one prefixed to "Les Jeuncs Franco" one gets a better idea of the recklessness and_ ' joyous exuberance of the . young men in 1830 in Franco than from any other sourco. No one, however, in this respect much excels Renan. We'have all tho kinds of Renan in tho prefaces. That writer never struck a more majestic and solemn note than in tho apostropho which opens the "Vie de Jesus," while it is in the preface to the "Souvenirs de Jeuneso" that tho simile of the buried city of Is occurs which has served as an illustration in so many pulpits, Renaurit is known, after the removal

of tho inflnenco upon him exerted by his sister Henrictte, bccame increasingly Voltarian in his tone, and there is no moro amusing specimen of him when ho is .in that vein than in the preface to '"Feuillcs Detachees" vrlien lie discourses on "the pious person from the neighbourhood of Nantes" who sent him tho monthly warning "There is a hell." Indeed, lie who in the caso of Itcnan folloivs tlio careless practico of the general reader and skips the prefaco will loso many a brilliant remark and a free-flowing vein of philosophic reflectiveness upon themes of everlasting interest to mankind.